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snekmint's review
3.0
A short story that picks up a story that I haven't read and dumps us right into the middle of a political exodus lead by a first-person narrator (this is very fashionable in modern fiction) who is the leader of a minority group of zombies ("humanz") trying to escape persecution from living humans.
Perhaps one of my little qualms was the term "humanz". It works fantastically in print, but I can't imagine how it would be pronounced to differentiate it from "humans" in speech. For this reason it doesn't strike me as a realistic name that would be adopted by anyone. But for the sake of a print novel, it's clear Ljubuncic just went ahead with it.
In the copy of "Darkness" I received there were a handful of typographical errors and missing words, but thankfully far fewer than many first-print novels I've seen. And happily, Ljubuncic puts together flowing, descriptive prose with all the hallmarks of an experienced reader and writer. My least favorite aspect of the style is the first-person internal monologue expressed in short, clipped sentences as we watch the unnamed narrator wrestle with decisions mentally. For some reason this is a defining feature of serious adventure/detective/military stories written "by men for men" and perhaps it's supposed to evoke the speech cadence of Film Noir or cop dramas, but in novel form it can be jarring to skip down a page of paragraph breaks. I don't read as slowly as an actor speaks, and the dramatic pauses just strike me as truncated or even stunted thoughts rather than eloquent statements. But maybe I just don't like that style of writing. (I don't.)
This short story moves along at a clip and I was pleased to see that we are introduced to the dramatic situation (a hostile takeover/hostage situation), we have some dramatic tension, we get some guidance from the unexpected moral compass and then we move on with the story. It even ends on a little cliffhanger. It took me several pages to figure out what was going on in-world, but if you are a fan of heavily military-themed zombie stories this one should satisfy.
Perhaps one of my little qualms was the term "humanz". It works fantastically in print, but I can't imagine how it would be pronounced to differentiate it from "humans" in speech. For this reason it doesn't strike me as a realistic name that would be adopted by anyone. But for the sake of a print novel, it's clear Ljubuncic just went ahead with it.
In the copy of "Darkness" I received there were a handful of typographical errors and missing words, but thankfully far fewer than many first-print novels I've seen. And happily, Ljubuncic puts together flowing, descriptive prose with all the hallmarks of an experienced reader and writer. My least favorite aspect of the style is the first-person internal monologue expressed in short, clipped sentences as we watch the unnamed narrator wrestle with decisions mentally. For some reason this is a defining feature of serious adventure/detective/military stories written "by men for men" and perhaps it's supposed to evoke the speech cadence of Film Noir or cop dramas, but in novel form it can be jarring to skip down a page of paragraph breaks. I don't read as slowly as an actor speaks, and the dramatic pauses just strike me as truncated or even stunted thoughts rather than eloquent statements. But maybe I just don't like that style of writing. (I don't.)
This short story moves along at a clip and I was pleased to see that we are introduced to the dramatic situation (a hostile takeover/hostage situation), we have some dramatic tension, we get some guidance from the unexpected moral compass and then we move on with the story. It even ends on a little cliffhanger. It took me several pages to figure out what was going on in-world, but if you are a fan of heavily military-themed zombie stories this one should satisfy.
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