Plague of the Dead (The Morningstar Strain) by Z. A. Recht
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Book Reviews of Plague of the Dead (The Morningstar Strain)
Book Review: Solid fast moving fun read
Summary: 4 Stars
If you like mindless action this is a good read. Though I like deep stories, sometimes I can shut off my mind and just let the plot take me for a ride. This book is pretty short on deep characters but plays more for heavy action.
The premise is simple a virus sweeps the globe leaving two types of zombies. Living dead that are plague carriers who are still alive called "sprinters" and "shamblers" who are plague victims who have died. You guessed it; sometimes you have to kill them twice. Of course they over run the world in short order.
The book follows two sets of characters, General Sherman and his rag-tag group of survivors from the Suez Canal. We follow them from the Middle East, to a destroyer, and finally to the west coast of America. Their quest? To meet up with an expert on the Morningstar virus that is also a friend of General Sherman. The author focuses the most attention on this group, which offers the best results and the plot moves along very quickly.
The second set of survivors is a TV journalist Julie, the doctor and friend of General Sherman Dr. Anna Demilio, and a rogue NSA agent Mason. Long and short Demilio gets in trouble providing details of the plague to Julie who puts it on national TV. Another NSA agent Sawyer arrests both Julie and Dr. Anna and puts them in top secret jail in D.C. As the world falls apart due to the Morningstar plague, Mason, switches sides and realizes he needs Anna to survive, he helps both women escape. As the world falls apart, Sawyer continues his pursuit of the "traitors". This part of the novel is interesting but not as interesting as General Sherman's group. I have not read the second installment but I would guess we will see more of this group in the second book.
Before the book ends, Anna gets an e-mail out to Sherman and they agree to meet at the fortified USAMRIID facility in Oklahoma City. Dr. Anna's group is right at the outskirts of D.C. at the end of the book and Sherman is in Oregon just having survived a rescue attempt of group of survivors.
Overall a good read. Stay away from this one if you are looking for deep characters and moral conflicts. This book is straight action with very limited characterization and a very Us vs. Them mindset. We get no deep love stories or power mad survivors in this one. I think the only reason this one works is that it keeps you moving at such a good pace with very solid action.
It does have some minor faults for example the idea that thousands of zombies would go across the desert following 1 truck all the way to the Suez Canal is a bit farfetched. I would have had a large group of survivors from Cairo goes towards the Suez Canal followed by a large number of Morningstar carriers. That is more realistic and would lead to some hard decisions by Sherman. An airstrike on the zombie swarm heading toward the Suez would have been a bit more realistic as well. Also, the trip to the island to fix the destroyer is a bit unnecessary (but amusing nonetheless) as the boat could still sail albeit at half speed. Also with the Sawyer character I really don't think he would care once everything started to fall apart. But he seems like a solid villain and I am interested as to where they will take him in the next book. Also, the Julie the hacker thing really is stretching the plot a bit. Let's face it; I would put my money on the NSA guy or Dr. Anna for having more brains than a reporter to hack a government database. In the author's defense, I think he realized if he explained too much, it would slow down the pace of the book.
I hope the author can keep this level up or the books that follow might disappoint. But I would recommend reading this if you like zombie books.
Book Review: A Solid Start to a promising series
Summary: 4 Stars
Lt. Colonel Anna Demilio of the USAMRIID knows the danger of this new bug dubed the Morningstar Virus.The goverment plays down the advances of the virus in africa despite Demilio's warnings. The story follows the US soldiers (and civies) from Africa to the the USA all the while running from the Morningstar Strain.
The public was not properly notified due to the efforts of the government to hush it up. By time the characters reach the US, it is clear that the virus has hold. This virus infects the living turning you into a mindless flesh eating zombie, but it keeps you alive. These "living zombies" are fast and can chase you down as the never wear out. The other form is the more traditional Romero zombie, slow shamblers. Formerly fast zombies (ones killed without a headshot)can be killed the same way any person can, however they will wake up again as shamblers. Shamblers can be killed with a headshot, but inflicting damage anywhere else does not kill them.
This book has everything from an all out assualt and military defenses to close quarters battles and shut in sieges. There is plenty of action to keep you interested and the writting is of solid quality. The only issue maybe that the characters are bit more shallow than I would like. I'm a big fan of indirectly fleshing out characters, its a way of working in little kernels of info on them that will make characters a little bit more real. That's not to say the characters wre not interesting, far from it.
In the end Plague of the Dead intorduce little new to the genre. Even so, Recht managed to take the sacrificial hero, paranoia, and outright terror of survival to twist them into a cohesive and exciting reading experience. This is book that I had a hard time setting down, in my mind that is the best mark of good book.
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Book Review: First Impressions...
Summary: 4 Stars
Like the title says, this is a first impression. I'm just under 100 pages in and there are a couple things that bug me.
But first, I have to say I love how he handles Zombies in general. The dual stages of infection are a brilliant twist, and all the gory details he gives are just plain fun to read.
The few things that trouble me may just be personal opinion or me being too picky. There are two issues:
The first, and more distracting to me, is the development of Recht's characters. Maybe they mature wonderfully and really grow into themselves later in the book, but by this point they all seem a little soap-opera inspired.
The second bit troubling me, I'm sure, is just a result of me being too picky.
Early in the novel the Army destroys a bridge to aid in cutting off the spread of Morningstar. The imagery in this scene made it seem as though the Army used a nuke to take down a bridge. There was talk of a bright explosion and bits of metal flying everywhere...that's just not how demolitions are performed. There are a few similar blunders along these lines, but that was the best example I could think of.
All in all, I'm enjoying the book. These aren't issues that will make me stop reading. I like the story, and I especially like his twists, as I mentioned. It's a great read so far and I'd recommend it to anyone who's enjoyed World War Z or Day by Day Armageddon or anything along those lines.
Book Review: A refreshing take on the zombie genre...
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is the first in a series of three about a virus outbreak that turns people into "zombie like" hosts for the virus. This was a very good book. I really like the story premise and the author's take on the zombie genre. There wasn't as much gore as I thought there would be in a zombie novel but there was still tons of action.
Since this is the first in the series the plot and story telling is a little bit slower than a lot of the other zombie books out there because the author knows he has three books to work his story into. In the book you get a good introduction to the main characters for the saga but one thing I didn't like is that there were almost too many characters for the author to work with and I don't really know a lot about any of them and there just really isn't the "main character connection" that really draws you into caring about who dies and who doesn't.
This is one of only a few zombie genre stories, books or movies, that doesn't make the military look like a bunch of power-hungry jarhead rapists. The group that the story focuses on is very down to earth and humble which is really refreshing for me since I'm almost to the point of hating any movie/book that goes the bad military persona way.
I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the saga and this book set-up a good story base for those that follow.
Book Review: Good read
Summary: 4 Stars
I quite enjoyed this book. I'm relatively new to zombie books, so I couldn't say which ideas were new and which aren't, but I liked the concept of having two different types of zombies. The parallels drawn between the Morningstar virus and other viruses also made sense to me.
I had a couple of minor issues with the book. There were a fair number of spelling/printing errors in my copy (such as Pacific Northwest not being capitalized). Not the fault of the author, nor did they detract from my enjoyment. But the copy editor needs to double check his work.
*Spoiler Warning*
The other issue is a pet peeve of mine. I grew up in northern California - five hours north of San Francisco. From where I lived, it was another hour and a half to two hours to the Oregon border. If the Ramage was headed to San Francisco, and they were dropped off a little north of the city - even 2 hundred miles north - they would have been crossing northern California, not Oregon. Not a major issue, but it seems like there's a lot of folks that forget that San Francisco is in the middle of the state. Like I said, pet peeve.
Still a good book, though, and I look forward to the sequel.