THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

Two teenagers discover a frozen human body hanging in a small, isolated cabin in the woods. When they bring the corpse back to town for an autopsy, they inadvertently start a chain reaction to a full-blown Zombie apocalypse. As whatever virus this corpse had transfers to more and more people, the authorities scramble to contain the situation, fully realising that they may already be too late.

MY VERDICT:

The first book in the Cadaver series is one I would definitely recommend; it ticks all the boxes I look for in a good Zombie novel and, aside from one issue which can easily be overlooked, is very near perfection. First of all, the narrative is generally interesting, starting with an air of mystery as the two kids discover the dead man that triggers the Zombie apocalypse snowball. Initially, you’ll think it's obvious what happens but what actually happens is not what you expect. The story then develops into a medium-scale outbreak that could - the book reaches its climax before we find out - cause the end of civilisation. The drama unfolds, mostly, inside a hospital which keeps the story contained, and due to the fairly tight layout of the single structure, the action is kept 'relative' and 'in your face'; never giving you time to get bored or offering lengthy prose of needless backstory. All the characters - including the few outside the hospital - feel like real characters, most with backstories of their own and all having a believable reason to be where they are. The Zombies are described well; their wounds, their clothes and so on, shuffling about as old-school horrors yet still feeling immediate and deadly, the clever writing giving the mindless brutes a greater sense of threat; they are slow but they are never far from the characters, never somewhere where they can be brushed off as a nuisance, rather than a threat. This limited scope of the story is good for keeping events believable and straightforward but does, however, bring me to the books greatest weakness; pacing. For some reason, the author seems fixated on telling the same story, several different ways, from several different viewpoints. For example, one chapter goes through a scenario where a bunch of characters are locked in a room with another character, who they suspect is infected but are not quite sure, in an adjacent room. The characters hear a ruckus in the adjacent room and, sure enough, a Zombie pops out - the characters struggling to get away, only to eventually do so as the chapter ends. The following chapter then goes back to the beginning of this same scenario, playing out in the exact same way, only this time told through the eyes of the character in the adjacent room, the one that eventually turns into a Zombie. You only get a bit of extra information at the end of the chapter, moving the overall plot along. This pattern is repeated throughout other sections of the book, giving the sense that it is akin to an excitable dog on a leash; it keeps wanting to take off with its riveting story - and I mean this honestly, I genuinely left each chapter wanting more, to see what happens next - but it is always being held back, there is a large, carefully-crafted story to tell and the author wishes to milk it for all its worth. This lack of forward momentum can be a little frustrating, though, as I hinted at before, it is hardly a reason to avoid this otherwise incredible book.