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vikingwolf's review
3.0
A team of high class criminals have been offered 100 million by The Consortium to break in to and corrupt the National DNA Database. They are a dangerous group who know who is in the team and where to find them if the raid goes wrong or they are doublecrossed. There is a strict timetable for the attack...and just as the team are about to leave for the mission, a zombie outbreak quarantines the city, making a whole new set of problems for them...
The book starts with an animal rights protest group breaking into a lab of a rich scientist in his penthouse flat to deliver justice but instead they find that the scientist has been experimenting with something dangerous...something that has created a zombie. The hapless men manage to blow up the whole floor, leaking the zombie virus out into the city, starting an outbreak. I liked the idea of how this outbreak began.
This of course is going to cause havoc for the team as they don't know why the city has been quarantined, only that they must get through the police lines and use the chaos to their advantage. Of course they have no idea what has really happened or that the citizens are now turning into deadly zombies. As they approach police lines with a cover story, they do not know what awaits them.
Inside the burning building, a young man is battling to survive the fire and the zombies. He was a test subject for the scientist, who experimented on him with the virus in return for money and a posh flat below the penthouse and is kept around for more blood tests when needed-because he turned out to be immune. That is certainly lucky considering his current problems. Now he needs to find a way to get out and avoid being eaten but where does he go?
A military group are also on the move into the city with orders to find the boy who may be the only chance of a cure for the disaster. They know where he is but they are going to have to use the sewers to get in, unaware that the local rat population have been infected...
The action switches between each group as they try to move around the same small area of the city all with very different tasks to do. It was a bit different from the usual zombie story but had enough zombies to keep you happy, along with a conspiracy plot and the actual raid. I very much enjoy the writing of Dave Jeffery who has written a lot of excellent short stories that I've read over the last few years so it was fun to read a novella from him this time.
The book starts with an animal rights protest group breaking into a lab of a rich scientist in his penthouse flat to deliver justice but instead they find that the scientist has been experimenting with something dangerous...something that has created a zombie. The hapless men manage to blow up the whole floor, leaking the zombie virus out into the city, starting an outbreak. I liked the idea of how this outbreak began.
This of course is going to cause havoc for the team as they don't know why the city has been quarantined, only that they must get through the police lines and use the chaos to their advantage. Of course they have no idea what has really happened or that the citizens are now turning into deadly zombies. As they approach police lines with a cover story, they do not know what awaits them.
Inside the burning building, a young man is battling to survive the fire and the zombies. He was a test subject for the scientist, who experimented on him with the virus in return for money and a posh flat below the penthouse and is kept around for more blood tests when needed-because he turned out to be immune. That is certainly lucky considering his current problems. Now he needs to find a way to get out and avoid being eaten but where does he go?
A military group are also on the move into the city with orders to find the boy who may be the only chance of a cure for the disaster. They know where he is but they are going to have to use the sewers to get in, unaware that the local rat population have been infected...
The action switches between each group as they try to move around the same small area of the city all with very different tasks to do. It was a bit different from the usual zombie story but had enough zombies to keep you happy, along with a conspiracy plot and the actual raid. I very much enjoy the writing of Dave Jeffery who has written a lot of excellent short stories that I've read over the last few years so it was fun to read a novella from him this time.
bergamint's review
4.0
This was a different type of zombie book to the usual fare. It was set in the UK which I quite enjoyed and the first chapter got my attention and the rest of the book held my attention. Sure there were some grammatical errors but they didn't spoil my enjoyment of roaring along with the story. Good job - looking forward to the follow up novel.
xterminal's review
3.0
Dave Jeffery, Necropolis, vol. 1: Necropolis Rising (Dark Continents, 2011)
One of my favorite books of last year was Forrest Armstrong's The Deadheart Shelters, so I've started keeping my ear to the same ground that coughed that one up for me to see what it's rumbling about these days. The two books it most recently divulged were Matt Hults' Husk (elsewhere this ish) and Dave Jeffery's Necropolis Rising. The latter is not a bad little book, and I will admit that my rating of it is personal; I knocked it down from “slightly above average” to “dead average” because of a few personal grammatical-nitpicky quirks, which I'll get to eventually.
There's a solid premise here, and half of it you maybe haven't seen before. A genetically-engineered virus has gotten out of its lab and infected much of the city if Birmingham (UK, not US). The military think they've managed to contain it (and a competent military alone would be enough to set this story apart from most zombie tales), but there are a couple of skunks in the works. One of them is a small band of cyber-criminals being very well paid to get into Birmingham's crime lab and plant a virus. They're on a timetable, and if they don't deliver, they die. The other is a mole inside the military itself, planted there by the company engineering the virus to make sure that the one individual seemingly immune to the plague is evacuated and delivered to them.
Not bad, not bad at all. Jeffery combines the bits you do know all too well (ZOMGIMMUNESAVIOR!!!) with the Dave Jeffery Original Programming bits into a fast-paced survival-horror scenario that works most of the time. The problem is that the manuscript could have used a good editor to suggest to Jeffery when word substitutions would have been a good idea (“O'Connell was reviled by such a thought.”) or when he was using an incorrect form of a cliché (“worse case scenario” pops up once). And then there's the biggie. If I had a list of the ten golden rules for spelling and grammar, this would be on it, and if it doesn't bother you as much as it does me, than take this with a grain of salt. But please, Mr. Jeffery, and the hundreds of other writers who have done this: learn the difference between “phase” (a stage or aspect of something) and “faze” (to shock). In Mr. Jeffery's case: there is no such word as “unphased”. And yes, being the little grammar-Nazi bitch that I am, that was enough for me to dock this half a star. It's still getting a recommend, just not as strong as it would have gotten otherwise. ** ½
One of my favorite books of last year was Forrest Armstrong's The Deadheart Shelters, so I've started keeping my ear to the same ground that coughed that one up for me to see what it's rumbling about these days. The two books it most recently divulged were Matt Hults' Husk (elsewhere this ish) and Dave Jeffery's Necropolis Rising. The latter is not a bad little book, and I will admit that my rating of it is personal; I knocked it down from “slightly above average” to “dead average” because of a few personal grammatical-nitpicky quirks, which I'll get to eventually.
There's a solid premise here, and half of it you maybe haven't seen before. A genetically-engineered virus has gotten out of its lab and infected much of the city if Birmingham (UK, not US). The military think they've managed to contain it (and a competent military alone would be enough to set this story apart from most zombie tales), but there are a couple of skunks in the works. One of them is a small band of cyber-criminals being very well paid to get into Birmingham's crime lab and plant a virus. They're on a timetable, and if they don't deliver, they die. The other is a mole inside the military itself, planted there by the company engineering the virus to make sure that the one individual seemingly immune to the plague is evacuated and delivered to them.
Not bad, not bad at all. Jeffery combines the bits you do know all too well (ZOMGIMMUNESAVIOR!!!) with the Dave Jeffery Original Programming bits into a fast-paced survival-horror scenario that works most of the time. The problem is that the manuscript could have used a good editor to suggest to Jeffery when word substitutions would have been a good idea (“O'Connell was reviled by such a thought.”) or when he was using an incorrect form of a cliché (“worse case scenario” pops up once). And then there's the biggie. If I had a list of the ten golden rules for spelling and grammar, this would be on it, and if it doesn't bother you as much as it does me, than take this with a grain of salt. But please, Mr. Jeffery, and the hundreds of other writers who have done this: learn the difference between “phase” (a stage or aspect of something) and “faze” (to shock). In Mr. Jeffery's case: there is no such word as “unphased”. And yes, being the little grammar-Nazi bitch that I am, that was enough for me to dock this half a star. It's still getting a recommend, just not as strong as it would have gotten otherwise. ** ½
tykewriter's review
5.0
ZOMBIE novels are ten a penny these days, often as not putting the lie into the claimed demand for originality by mainstream publishers, but every so often one of the undead slaughter-fests rears its head to moan a discordant note that puts it outside the dismal pack.
Necropolis Rising, by Dave Jeffrey, is just such a title. The book grabs hold like a zombie and won’t let go until you’ve finished it off. For all that, however, the plot goes far beyond the now standard fare of a small band of survivors seeking to stay alive and find a place of safety in the midst of a dead, zombie-infested civilisation.
Instead, the undead set the stage for an action-packed ride into mayhem, filled with intrigue and betrayal, where the characters have definite objectives beyond the immediacy of staying alive. The end is far from nigh; though it is always there, a lurking shadow of doom, waiting for one terrible mistake.
For Birmingham, the undead apocalypse has arrived, bringing its days as Britain’s second city to a terrifying end, but for the authorities the race is on to ensure that the Apocalypse fails to spread beyond its cordon sanitaire.
Nobody gets in; nobody gets out, but two covert teams are heading into the city nonetheless. Their respective missions are worlds apart, though no less shady in their purpose, but the fates of both teams will be become intertwined if any of them is make it out of the city alive.
O’Connell is a former Royal Marine, drummed out on a dishonourable discharge, who has forged a lucrative career in crime. Hired by an international cartel of organised crime, he’s tasked with a very specific cyber-crime: to make the police’s national DNA database a tool of the criminals rather than the police.
Success demands a covert raid to hack the computer direct, but there’s a problem – the mainframe is located in Birmingham. It’s an added complication to a job for which failure is not an option. Like it or not, he and his team have no choice but to sneak through the military cordon and face the undead.
Shipman on the other hand still serves Queen and Country, but in a darker, more morally dubious capacity, as a covert, special forces operative, used to missions that venture far beyond the pale. The Major’s team has a specific objective in mind: a survivor of the plague who holds the key to a cure and more – if he can be extracted alive.
Both O’Connell and Shipman are in a race against time, and to cap it all, there’s a traitor in their midst who wants the prize for private gain, but as they head towards their objectives, and their desperate need to survive overlaps, they find themselves working together to secure survival.
Behind the scenes, powerful forces are engaged in an internecine web of intrigue to profit and control a bio-weapon of fearsome potential, but their best laid plans depend on the two men leading their teams into the heart of Armageddon, where no plan can stay the course, and only wits and courage can see any of them through.
Jeffrey has written a novel that takes the standard zombie tropes and puts them to refreshing work in the service of the intrigue and deception that reveals itself as the story progresses. Quite how this combines to make for a refreshing addition to the zombie arena would conspire to create too many spoilers here; the surest way to reveal the originality at work is to dive into this action-packed thriller.
The author has revealed that zombie stories still have some life left yet.
Necropolis Rising, by Dave Jeffrey, is just such a title. The book grabs hold like a zombie and won’t let go until you’ve finished it off. For all that, however, the plot goes far beyond the now standard fare of a small band of survivors seeking to stay alive and find a place of safety in the midst of a dead, zombie-infested civilisation.
Instead, the undead set the stage for an action-packed ride into mayhem, filled with intrigue and betrayal, where the characters have definite objectives beyond the immediacy of staying alive. The end is far from nigh; though it is always there, a lurking shadow of doom, waiting for one terrible mistake.
For Birmingham, the undead apocalypse has arrived, bringing its days as Britain’s second city to a terrifying end, but for the authorities the race is on to ensure that the Apocalypse fails to spread beyond its cordon sanitaire.
Nobody gets in; nobody gets out, but two covert teams are heading into the city nonetheless. Their respective missions are worlds apart, though no less shady in their purpose, but the fates of both teams will be become intertwined if any of them is make it out of the city alive.
O’Connell is a former Royal Marine, drummed out on a dishonourable discharge, who has forged a lucrative career in crime. Hired by an international cartel of organised crime, he’s tasked with a very specific cyber-crime: to make the police’s national DNA database a tool of the criminals rather than the police.
Success demands a covert raid to hack the computer direct, but there’s a problem – the mainframe is located in Birmingham. It’s an added complication to a job for which failure is not an option. Like it or not, he and his team have no choice but to sneak through the military cordon and face the undead.
Shipman on the other hand still serves Queen and Country, but in a darker, more morally dubious capacity, as a covert, special forces operative, used to missions that venture far beyond the pale. The Major’s team has a specific objective in mind: a survivor of the plague who holds the key to a cure and more – if he can be extracted alive.
Both O’Connell and Shipman are in a race against time, and to cap it all, there’s a traitor in their midst who wants the prize for private gain, but as they head towards their objectives, and their desperate need to survive overlaps, they find themselves working together to secure survival.
Behind the scenes, powerful forces are engaged in an internecine web of intrigue to profit and control a bio-weapon of fearsome potential, but their best laid plans depend on the two men leading their teams into the heart of Armageddon, where no plan can stay the course, and only wits and courage can see any of them through.
Jeffrey has written a novel that takes the standard zombie tropes and puts them to refreshing work in the service of the intrigue and deception that reveals itself as the story progresses. Quite how this combines to make for a refreshing addition to the zombie arena would conspire to create too many spoilers here; the surest way to reveal the originality at work is to dive into this action-packed thriller.
The author has revealed that zombie stories still have some life left yet.
More...