Review: I got this for free from Amazon. And after reading some of the reviews, it kind of made me put off reading it. But I've kinda been on a zombie kick the past few days so I decided to give it a try. I'm really glad I did. Despite some of the bad reviews talking about how dull and slow they thought it was, I didn't have the same type of reaction. Well, ok, I'll admit it was a little slow in the beginning. But I didn't think it was slow in the boring, snooze fest way. I thought it was slow, reading about being in the same building for ages way. That's all.
It took some time for our main character Bill to leave his London flat, but that was to be expected. When the outbreak happened, he had literally just broken his leg. He can't just run from his flat and expect to survive with a freshly broken leg. So we see him surviving and planning his escape while giving his leg at least some time to heal, though not as long as anyone would like to have.
I thought this book was great, despite its slower start because it was realistic! We don't see someone running around smashing the head of every single zombie or finding loads upon loads of stores of food. We see Bill making do and survive with what he has been brought or what he could find in his building. We see him rummaging through his neighbors flats (who are long gone), see him finding anything he can use to store water, trying not to make so much noise as to attract tons of zombies to his building. He was really surviving how most of us would survive if this happened. He was also smart about things. He tried to really plan out his moves. Trying to get to the car in front of his flat to check it? Made a plan. Found a safe place to hide after being chased away from his street, made a new plan. He tried to plan out where he was trying to go, what to look for, etc. He didn't just try to run willy nilly and hope for the best every time he did something. I also liked how this book showed him being human. He wasn't paying attention checking a building and almost got taken down. He was riding the bike and had some mishaps because of the infected appearing or knocking him off. This book was realistic about survival.
I also liked that unlike a lot of other books/tv shows etc. We actually found out what caused the outbreak in the first place. It wasn't just hidden away for us to never know. We find out of course, that human experimentation gone wrong was the cause for this. I won't spoil what the experimenting actually was, but we actually get a cause! I spend so much time after reading other zombie books wondering what caused the outbreak in the first place. It's satisfying knowing for once. We also get to find out whether anyone can be immune to it.
Another big thing I liked about this book was that it takes place in London. Most zombie books I've read take place in the US, so it was really nice reading about another country, city, geographic region. I'm also excited that as the story progresses and we meet other characters, we'll also end up in Scotland and Ireland.
