THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

When the Zombies rose, one group was ready, one group had been preparing for this fateful day for years, that group was the Z. E. D. S. (Zombie Elimination and Defense Squad). Under the leadership of Atlas, the group of makeshift heroes heads out into dangerous lands in order to save innocent civilians from this undead nightmare and return them to their safehouse. However, worse things than Zombies wander these lands and it's not long before the group stumble into a large-scale military operation, hellbent on destroying the Z. E. D. S. and all they worked to create.

MY VERDICT:

Put bluntly, Z. E. D. S. Rising is the worst Zombie book I have read in a long time. It has a few interesting concepts, saving it from the dreaded trashcan of inferiority, but these are mostly left shamefully underdeveloped. For a start, you would expect the book to give some insight into how the Z. E. D. S. prepared for the Zombie apocalypse - the weapons they gathered, the food stockpiled, the news stories examined to find any small hint that Zombies were on there way - but no, the group learnt all their survival skills from a lucky encounter which is mostly overlooked by the narrative and the Zombies appear as soon as the novel begins; no introduction to characters or chance for built up tension. Then, for some unfathomable reason, everyone automatically assumes the Zombie plague is caused by a virus - no debate, it just is. There is also no reason given or even suggested as to why a government-sanctioned military operation wants to annihilate the Z. E. D. S. team or why, when one of the evil leaders of this operation is shot in the head, he still re-animates, all cognitive abilities intact. In all, it feels overwhelmingly like a story written simply to provide a stepping off point for a later story. However, what is by far the worst aspect of this book, is the often appalling use of English, the frequent spelling mistakes and unintentional tense changes (the author really needs to learn that it is Zombie "horde" and not Zombie "hoard"). After the first ten pages, I even considered giving up and reading something else. Thankfully though, the errors do fizzle out as the brief novel progresses.