THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

This second book in the Omega Days series sees the group of rammed together friends try and storm a crashed aircraft carrier to outrun the virus and its terrible creation - the living dead. Their plan is as horrific as it is brilliant; aircraft carriers, especially one as big as they have found, offer enough food, provisions and survival commodities to keep hundreds of people alive for months while at sea. However, the former crew members, numbering in their thousands, are still on board, not as regimental navy seamen but as undead ghouls, eternally roaming the decks with no concept of escape. Establishing any form of long term settlement on the disabled aircraft carrier will mean re-killing every Zombie on the ship, something not at all easy for a rag-tag bunch of civilians with very little combat training. There is also another threat lurking in close proximity, and this threat comes from, not the dead, but the living…

MY VERDICT:

Omega Days: Ship of the Dead is an above-average read which continues the story of the homegrown band of brothers we read about in the first novel. In general, I like it - the author continues remarkable and clear word use, providing a much more streamlined story than the first outing which got a bit tangled in places. There are also a few twists in the tale to keep things interesting and that is definitely a plus point as this book does seem to sag in the middle. The first chapter, introducing new character Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) Rosa Escobedo, is wonderful. It describes her and a fellow EMT, racing to the scene of a violent riot in an ambulance. It is initially slow-paced as the world is yet unaware of the Zombie menace though, when they find out, the writing explodes into quick-fire action with people running, screaming and dying. It was extremely disappointing to find that this was effectively the only radically new section of the entire book; Rosa is the only new character to the original group and, apart from the shift in setting, from land to boat as well as a change in focus from mere survival to direct action, there is nothing to set this piece of fiction apart from the first Omega Days volume. The ending does 'up the ante' by providing a new angle for the Zombie apocalypse so the mildly disappointing mid-section is worth sticking with.