THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

In Dead South, for unknown reasons Zombies have started appearing all over London; feasting on the flesh of the living. The city goes into panic and as the government sends out promises that the situation is under control, millions of people watch the horror unfold with 24-hour news coverage. One viewer, Dean Baker of Eltham in South London is about to get an up close and personal encounter with the hungry dead and it will change his life forever - hours spent relaxing with his wife and dog are about to turn into a never-ending battle to protect his family.

MY VERDICT:

I was not really that excited about reading Dead South from the blurb and first few pages; it just seemed too cliché, too usual. I did not find it believable that the main character in the book somehow knows that the hostiles in London are actually Zombies - the government and everybody else says that they are just regular people on some haywire new drug. This gives him ample time to save almost his entire extended family - who, bizarrely, all live about ten minutes away from each other. I also find it extremely surprising, the ease of Dean's early antics. This is London, a city of over eight million people - moving anywhere without being crowded by thousands of panicked citizens and ravenous dead is going to be next to impossible! However, after initial disappointed, the book gets a whole lot better. It's strange, there are no stand-out moments but the emotion and inter-group diplomacy of this well-written story seems to suck you in until the end - a end that leaves you hoping for a sequel. The narrative is basically a day by day account of the beginnings of a Zombie uprising in London all told from the point of view of Dean, keeping the story grounded and 'tight' if not very original. It deals with what Dean and his group of survivors must do to protect themselves from the Zombie horde, how they react to each other, how they deal with the emotion of the unfathomable situation they find themselves in and what happens when they encounter someone who is not as willing to work to survive as they are. Sadly, the narrative gets so deep in group dynamics, it does forget the Zombies somewhat towards the end.