“You died twenty years ago. Welcome back…” Over the last couple of years, I have become a fan of the publisher Abaddon Books and have taken the opportunity to read as many of their ongoing series as I can get my hands on. I enjoy The Afterblight Chronicles, and Pax Britannia has become a personal favourite (more on that in the next review). I recently picked up the first book in another series called The Infernal Game. The Infernal Game: Cold Warriors by Rebecca Levene charts the fortunes Read more […]
“Life sucks, then you die. Period. Unless you’re James Stark, a hitman in Hell for eleven years before escaping back up to Hell-on-earth L.A. – looking for revenge, absolution….love, maybe. But Hell’s not through with Stark. Heaven’s not either.” Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey is an urban fantasy featuring an unstoppable anti-hero wreaking his vengeance on the people who wronged him. Condemned to Hell by his peers, James Stark fights his way back out of the Pit and he wants payback. During Read more […]
To round off Zombie Appreciation Month I’ve decided to read Handling The Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Set in Stockholm, during the midst of a heatwave, strange things are starting to occur. Electrical appliances won’t switch off and everyone is suffering from unexplained headaches. Over the course of a single night, every person that has died in the previous two months is reanimated, including those that have been buried. The ever pragmatic authorities move from one disastrous idea to Read more […]
“The Good News: We Survived. The Bad News: So Did They”. Imagine a world where scientists have cured cancer and defeated the common cold. Sounds idyllic, but what if this medical breakthrough leads to the creation and distribution of a virus that reanimates the dead. In Feed by Mira Grant we find an Earth where humanity has done just that. The infected are a fact of life and everyone has been forced to live with the constant threat of zombies. In addition everyone has the virus. Unlike most Read more […]
“They’ll chase you, they’ll rip you open, they’ll feed on you…” I have a confession to make. I’m thirty six years old and when I first decided to do a zombie themed month on The Eloquent Page I didn’t even consider including any young adult fiction. In the last couple of years I have read exactly two books that could be described as YA fiction. Both were pretty good, and I’ll be reviewing one of them next month but I never thought something like zombie fiction could really exist for a younger Read more […]
“This place has always been ruled by the vampire lords. Now they are plotting to destroy the city. Over my dead body”. For the second entry in Zombie Appreciation Month we move away from the end of the world toward a detective novel with a twist. I’m sure you can guess the nature of the twist? Nekropolis by Tim Waggoner is the first outing for the zombie detective. Hundreds of years ago, Father Dis and the five lesser Dark Lords brought all of the Darkfolk together. To avoid continued persecution Read more […]
Welcome to Zombie Appreciation Month. Throughout October The Eloquent Page will take a look at different interpretations of zombies in modern literature. To begin with I’ve decided to start with a classic theme. I give you The End of the World. Will humanity triumph over the worldwide zombie plague, or will the walking dead inherit the earth? It seems only fair that the first book that I’m looking at is the one that gave me the idea in the first place. There were a number of book launches at Read more […]
Time to sneak in just one more review before Zombie Appreciation Month begins. After reading Patient Zero I was very keen to read more of Jonathan Maberry’s work. I really liked his idea of terrorists creating a pathogen that reanimates the dead and using them as a bio-weapon. Patient Zero whips along at a breakneck pace and I found the writing superb. In its sequel, The Dragon Factory, Joe Ledger and Echo team are back. However, no zombies this time out. Instead, the team are in a race against Read more […]
“Secret Experiment. Tiny Island. Big Mistake” At its most basic level, the story in Ancestor by Scott Sigler could be described as a number of chases. Firstly, we have the US government trying to track down renegade bio-engineering company Genada, as they try to operate above the law. Then we have the story of evil predators chasing people around an inhospitable island in the dead of winter. It would be really easy to right off this novel as just that, but I strongly urge you not to. Ancestor Read more […]
“When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week, then there’s either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world. And there’s nothing wrong with my skills.” I have a confession to make. I’m thoroughly unsettled by zombies. It doesn’t matter if they are the old style slowly shuffling undead or fast moving rage fuelled beasts made popular over the last couple of years. The whole concept leaves an unpleasant sensation in the pit of my stomach. Read more […]
Occasionally I enjoy nothing better than reading a big old doorstop of a novel. You know the sort of thing I mean. Big enough that you know your wrists are in danger of snapping if you try and read more than about 100 pages in a single sitting, The Passage falls into this category. With seven hundred and sixty-six pages all in, you can be sure that this story is epic in scope and promise. The book is split into two sections. Part one tells the story of military genetic experimentation gone wrong. Read more […]