THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

A lone salesman, trapped fifteen-hundred miles from his family, faces an impossible predicament; how to get back home alive now the majority of the world's population have turned into mindless, flesh-hungry Zombies. He has no survival skills and is useless in combat but, luckily, he stumbles across two enigmatic characters that offer to accompany him on his journey: ex-Army Ranger Maps, and loud-mouthed alcoholic thug, the Irishman. However, the trio are not prepared for just how dark the world has become and will quickly discover that Zombies are not the only enemies out there - perhaps not even the worst.

MY VERDICT:

Dead Among Us is quite straightforward to sum up; it starts badly, has an excellent mid-section but is let-down by a disappointing ending. The story begins quite strangely for a Zombie book as there is no introduction of characters or build-up of a Zombie outbreak to full-blown apocalypse; this narrative just begins with everything already established - a survivor group has been formed and the apocalypse has already happened, ending most of humanity. The survivor group is formed of three characters who are, disappointingly, all fairly bland. You do unearth a bit more about them as the story progress though and the transformation of the lead character, Garret, from scared, useless, weakling to group leader is nice to read, but, none of the characters have any real depth, being skilled fighters with combat experience against both the living and the dead but nothing more. For the most part, the Zombies - the undead - are just a background, placed in the world to give the crazy enemy groups the survivors come across some added believability, going some way to justify their outlandish behaviour. This is a major letdown for the book as we know the darkness humanity is capable of - it's interesting to read about how different people survived through the apocalypse, and the ones on show here are more than the usual 'big bad guys', but it's not really anything new or exciting. Thankfully the plot shifts in the second act as the survivors, their group having grown in number, discover the Zombies themselves have started becoming smart - an opportunity for the dead to retake centre stage. Sadly though, the idea is underused and ultimately sees the Zombies almost disappearing from the story entirely as they learn to ‘fear’ the gun-happy living humans (probably quite realistic but disappointing for such a potentially outstanding concept). And that is what makes the ending of the story poor; the survivors, now back to the original three, get to where they are going without any climactic battle or unforeseen hurdle to overcome - it is as though the writer just ran out of ideas and simply ended things in the most basic way possible.