I’ve decided that “reviews” at Amazon.com and other places are basically worthless. So I am going to do my reviews here now. That way anyone who ends up trusting my reviews can easily find more books to potentially read. Most of the books I read now are e-books on Kindle. I kind of hate the idea of not having printed paper books, but it’s probably for the best. It’s also cheaper, which is good. Makes it difficult to “collect” them. (I collect Survivalist Fiction – post-apocalyptic type stories of all kinds — sometimes I’ll purchase a paperback copy of a book, if there is one, if I like the e-book and I want to add it to my collection)
First up is a review of a book I haven’t even finished yet, but want to sing its praises. I can’t imagine it not being as good or better up to the end. So far it’s a fairly standard plague-zombie story. (there are many different flavors of zombies; at least 31 flavors)
***** Zombie Games (Origins) is the first in a series of zombie novels by Kristen Middleton (and C.J. Pinard — the co-author seems to change from book to book). It’s a breath of fresh air to read a book that “reads well” and is a joy to read. The writing is very good, crisp and clean, the dialogue is good, the story is interesting, even if it’s “your more or less basic zombie novel” (so far), the action and flow are good, no noticed typos so far halfway through the book, and so on. They are “Young Adult”, but not in the “(too) juvenile” sense. I wouldn’t even call these YA at all, so far. I can’t see anyone who likes zombie novels and/or post-apocalyptic / survivalist fiction not enjoying this book. Unless something weird occurs, I will be purchasing the next book in the series, and hopefully all of the others after that. (it looks like 5 books so far) The first e-book is free and the rest more or less reasonably priced. $3 for book 2 is fine with me. Books 3 and 4 are $3.70 (?) and book 5 is $4, which is pushing it price-wise for me, but if they continue to be this good, I’ll do it without thinking or complaint. Addendum: I did find a handful of typos in the second half of the book, and the second book has more typos than that and the writing isn’t quite as good. Addendum #2: Not only did I find quite a few more typos in the third book (more than a couple of dozen), the writing wasn’t as good as the first two books, and there are some ‘extended’ story and structure issues, as well, so for some reason they are getting worse rather than better. So now I’m not sure if I will purchase books 4 and 5, for even more money, for possible lesser books. That’s unfortunate, because they are still more or less readable. Addendum #3: Based on reviews at Amazon, apparently the books take a paranormal/religious kind of turn, which resulted in some 1-Star reviews. I revisited these, thinking I might try the next book, especially since the Book 4 price is now $2.51, but now I’m done with the series. Not taking a chance. Too bad, because, as some people who were irritated with the change in the books also mentioned, I really liked the first three.
As a semi-side note, paperbacks are getting ‘ridiculously expensive’ anymore, and knowing, more or less, what the author gets out of these prices, they do deserve to make something from their writing — if you can purchase the books from Smashwords or CreateSpace, the author usually makes more money. I think Amazon is cutting out WAY too much of the pie, especially for e-books. We really need an e-book-friendly e-store for authors.
Second are three more zombie series that are pretty good. I purchased and read all of the books so far in the series, so that’s about as good of a ‘review’ as I can give. I can easily recommend them. Some readers will probably have to “cut them some slack” (I do that too often, but it’s the nature of the beast), but they are more than readable.
Note that they all had “too many typos” (some more than others), but that’s fairly typical, unfortunately. Imo, too many is more than a few. (ideally one, or zero) But if they can keep them down under a dozen or so, we should, unfortunately, be ‘happy’. They weren’t too bad. I can only hope I’m not getting used to typos in books. (I’m holding strong but am being bombarded on all sides)
**** Slow Burn series by Bobby Adair is a pretty good zombie series. Well-written, interesting, enjoyable read, etc. Some people don’t care for the dialogue patter between the primary characters, and it is a bit much sometimes, but not that bad. It’s very “realistic” in the human sense, a la actions, reactions, dialogue, feelings, etc., if one were to actually be put in that situation. It’s a semi-standard plague-zombie story, with a nice semi-zombie touch (thereby “slow-burners”). I got the first one free, and then purchased the next four. I will purchase more if he continues. $1 for book 2 and $3 for the rest is a good deal. (that’s how most e-books should be priced, imo) And you can get books 3 and 4 as a double deal for $4, so do that if you read on.
**** Dead, but Not for Long series by Matthew Kinney and Lesa Anders is also a pretty good zombie series. There are only two books so far, and I am looking forward to more. I got the first book free through a Book Bub deal, but the cost is $3, and same for the second — they are worth it. Perhaps they will lower the first book price once they offer more books in the series, as is the tendency for most series. This is also a fairly standard plague-zombie story with some government conspiracy thrown in. I think most readers will enjoy them. There is an additional offering, “Eric the Zombie Slayer” (novelette?), which concerns one of the characters in the book. It’s only $1, but I didn’t buy it — I still might. I don’t care for the character, which is what is making me hesitate.
**** Desolate by Robert Brumm is another good zombie series. You can get it as a complete trilogy for $5, which is well worth the money. (it looks like you can get books 2 and 3 as e-books, but not book 1?) I got it for free through Book Bub, and I feel kind of bad that I didn’t pay anything for it. This zombie story is more sci-fi in nature, with an aliens aspect. (not really a spoiler) Which is fine with me. It’s always nice to see the different things people put in their stories to make them different and/or stand out. If every zombie story was more or less the same it would get old after a while. This story basically ends, so there probably won’t be other books in the series, although he could if he wanted to. I will be checking out his others books, too.
***. Night of the Purple Moon by Scott Cramer (The Toucan Trilogy Book 1) was a pretty good book for a Young Adult Dystopian novel. (3.5 stars) I generally don’t care for books with “too-young-ish” characters (pre-16 y.o., or so), but if they are minimally well-written, or better, then they are palatable and readable. This book falls into that category. When they are free, it sometimes makes it better / less annoying or irritating. But this one was written well enough to overcome some of those “negative” aspects. The first book is more post-apocalyptic than dystopian, but I’m guessing the series then heads down the dystopian road. (Slight spoilers follow) The story is about a comet that seeds the earth with a bacteria that kills people who reach or are past puberty, based on their hormone levels. So it’s an interesting idea as a basis for a story. Obviously 99% of all adults and older teens die off immediately. Which leaves young people to try to survive, which they probably do too well, but maybe not. It’s fairly believable. I might purchase the next book in the series, although $4 is pushing it for me. It wasn’t good enough that I will purchase without having to think about it.
*** Sodium:1 Harbinger by Stephen Arseneault was a pretty good book. Kind of a sci-fi alien invasion-ish story a la the 1950’s. A few typos. (half a dozen or so, maybe more?) The writing was not so good at the beginning, which initially worried me. But it then got better about halfway through, to the end. This is typical of many (most?) books, but particularly those written by beginning and amateur authors, whose writing (hopefully) gets better with practice. And then sometimes they have trouble going back and evening it all out, which is not easy to do, even for experienced writers. There wasn’t any dialogue for the first several+ chapters, which was a bit strange. I don’t know if it was purposeful stylistic writing, or just the way it ended up. It read kind of like watching a 1950’s “grade B” sci-fi movie that holds up relatively well. If this was purposeful, then it was masterful. Overall, even though I kind of had to slog through it a bit here and there, I eventually got into it, and enjoyed reading it for the most part. It also includes the first chapter or so of the sequel, which was nice to know where the story was heading. The first e-book is free, but I probably won’t purchase the other books in the series, even though book 2 was $1, but the other books are in various excesses of $3, which may or may not be worth it.
** The Fall by David L. Dawson (The God Slayers Quartet Book 1) was an okay book. It’s basically a Young Adult Dystopian novel, many of which I enjoy. It had a little too much fantasy in it, and some sci-fi aspects, the former of which is not my favorite thing. It was kind of odd in that sense, in some ways, with some flying “god” robots or something. I never found out if they were of alien origin, or what. I don’t know if the author got the idea from Japanese comic books, or what. (anime, manga, etc.) I think it had some typos, but I don’t remember how many. Beyond that the book could have used some more advanced story editing, as well. This was a free e-book. It looks like you can get the trilogy for $1. But I’ll pass. The author has a lot of other books, that I may check out.