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The Bloodless
The Bloodless is a story of a small makeshift band of soldiers, weapons experts, and one pacifist (who is paradoxically a weapons designer) that are taking on the world, both living and undead. The battle began when GoD Laboratories, a company which began the first reanimation of dead humans, had an unfortunate “event”. Shortly, after “The Cloud” happened and another version of the “undead” was created.
Daniel Justice, a former high-ranking GoD scientist who worked on the “undead” experiment, lost his family to the “undead” (“Bloodless”) and became a prime target for one of the Bloodless in his experiments. He wants to make things right, but to do that he needs to get back to the compound safely and end the death toll left by the Bloodless.
In a world facing this kind of danger, Justice is understandably not the hero that anyone would like to see. He is, however, the only person that might be able to keep that world from becoming Bloodless. With his band of ragtag weapons specialists, Justice leads the mission toward destroying the evil-manufacturing compound that used to be his former job.
The first thing that really stood out was the originality on the same old zombie story. The Bloodless find creative ways to create new types of zombies. There are the traditional zombies, but there are also fast-moving and highly intelligent ones with military training and a tendency toward cruelty.
The two stand out features of this book are its conciseness and use of flashbacks which complement each other. Bloodless doesn’t take a lot of time offering background details or extended character descriptions. Instead it focuses exclusively on action and allows the reader to connect the dots through the use of flashbacks. The book begins with Jackson and his in an intense fight and ends with that same team fighting for their life. Throughout the race to complete specific missions, readers gain small insights into the characters. Justice becomes less of a cold scientist and more of hero trapped within a maze of evil that is bigger than him. Crist becomes less of a mysterious (yet paradoxical) stranger, and more of a reason for Justice to continue fighting.
While I enjoyed how concise the book was I had an issue with the overuse of clichés and loose ends. The book played a little too close to the stereotype for most characters. Almost everyone in the book seemed to fit the composite of the well-muscled hero or heroine who knew how to use a weapon.
Overall, the book reminded me of “The Walking Dead” mixed with characters from the “Expendables”. The book was intriguing, a well-paced plot, along with a unique approach on the zombie theme would make for a great read for action/adventure and zombie fans. I look forward to the rest of the series.
Pages: 230 | ISBN: 1508882142
Review: Euphoria-Z
Euphoria-Z follows several main characters that take their own paths through the story. Towards the end their paths converge in a thrilling action scene that’s reminiscent of some Walking Dead episodes. Cooper is an athletic high school student that’s about to start his senior year when the outbreak happens. He takes it upon himself to help those in need. I suppose Cooper could be considered the main character as he’s the first to be introduced and one of the main story lines that intersect the rest. The other characters story lines seem to wander off, get absorbed by other characters stories or simply get killed off. There is a band of outlaw bikers (the 1% for those of you who know their biker lingo). These are degenerate, murderous, rapists that somehow survived the apocalypse and now seek to take advantage of everyone they come across. They’re only interest is to retrieve the comforts of their old criminal lives. Drugs, guns and women. Fortunately for them, they stumble upon all three which leave them free to pursue their other desire, revenge. Which sets them on a course to clash violently with the other characters in the story.
The characters are all well developed and some of them, mostly the bikers, were entertaining to read. The characters only flaws were the frivolous and sometimes childish conversations they would have with one another. Although the dialogue lacks depth the gore and state of decay of the zombie hordes that constantly surround the characters are described with excellent detail. The various states of rot and mutilation that the zombies were in were always amusing. Especially in the beginning of the story when people are first starting to turn. As in the title the disease that spreads puts people into a state of complete euphoria where they have a single minded desire to, essentially, party until they die. Once they die they have a ravenous hunger for flesh, but their earlier state of non-stop party leaves them in various states of indecency. Which is interesting and humorous in its concept and execution.
This is a great zombie horror tale, but it’s also a story of survival as it starts to dig into the nuts and bolts of living in a post-apocalyptic world. This is good and bad at times as the drama and character driven story, although engaging, is constantly broken up by long bits of technical development of the characters living situation; scavenging, fortifying a building, building an elevator. This is a fine addition to the zombie genre and I wouldn’t mind reading the next book in the Z series.
ISBN: 1497497388
Pages: 411
LITERARY TITAN 