THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

Outpost H311 was a top-secret bunker, used by the Nazis for a highly-classified, paranormal experiment, located as far away from civilisation as possible; a remote island in the Arctic circle. When a plane crash lands on the island, the oil exploration team onboard are plunged into a nightmare they are not prepared for. Not only must they survive the bitter elements, they also soon discover that the base's inhabitants are not quite dead yet - resurrecting as hideously evil Nazi Zombies. However, there is something else on that island, something ancient, something beyond reality, something far more dangerous than mere Zombies.

MY VERDICT:

This book is full of promise but, unfortunately, it fails to live up to expectations. The action gets going quickly and I really like this - the plane crashes within the first one or two chapters and all character development is done after this point, different people reacting to their bleak situation in different ways, establishing a realistic hierarchy within their small group. Later on, when the team find the abandoned Nazi base, there are a number of quality descriptions of the furniture and room layout, giving lavish detail into this barren and stark military bunker, breathing unearthly life into the regimental, grey, slab-like walls. The big complaint here comes from the stark pace change; three survivors find and explore the initial sections of the base, then they go back and get the other survivors, then they explore more of the base and so on - it really slows everything down unnecessarily and destroys the narrative flow. There is some brief tension when one character dies early on from the paranormal monster hinted at in the description but then no one gets into any bother for what seems like ages, and the paranormal demon who did the murdering just seems to vanish until the very end of the book, seemingly being fine with the unwelcome strangers that have taken up residence in his bunker. That's probably the biggest concern about the novel; it's all about escalation - first there are a few Zombies, then there are more Zombies all at once, then there Zombies with guns (no explanation as to why they are different to the earlier Zombies), then comes a paranormal creature lurking outside (who does one thing and then is never mentioned again), finally a whole horde of paranormal creatures. Ok, there is a reason given as to why the Zombies cannot attack the group the moment they enter the base which allows tension to build but the paranormal stuff just seems to appear out of nowhere in the closing sections of the story to add some spice to a fairly linear Zombie tale; why do the ghostly abominations wait so long before they do anything?! It makes me frustrated and gives the impression that the author put in the paranormal element as an afterthought. There are more plotholes in the narrative too. If you can withstand a story that does not really make sense, Outpost H311 is a worthy read; it's a reasonably entertaining, well-written Zombie survival story that offers some light-weight scares. If you need a water-tight baseline to enjoy a novel however, look elsewhere as there are better Zombie stories out there.