Scan barcode
vikingwolf's review
4.0
All over America, children aged between four and six have been going to get their regular vaccines at hospitals and doctor clinics. Now they are returning to their medical examiners with strange flu like systems that are concerning their parents. Without warning, the kids suddenly turn aggressive and show a zombie like mentality, biting and killing adults. The adults are infected and turn into slow shambling wrecks who sadly retain a small sense of what has happened to them and who act as guards and lookouts for their fast young beasts who can move at frightening speed to bring down new victims. Those who have survived the start of this zombie apocalypse now need to find safety and escape the little monsters who are everywhere.
I've read a lot of zombie books in my time and there are usually a few child zombies that the characters struggle to take down. This is the first time that the main focus has been on zombie kids and man it was a bit of a scary ride! The kids turn from flu victims to beasts in a short period of time, giving no warning to their parents who are usually their first victims. I can imagine being paralysed by fear and confusion as you see your child change so quickly. I also found it interesting that the adults do seem to have some kind of intelligence after they are infected, and the infected parents grieve shockingly when their zombie kids die which was kind of heartbreaking to read. The children can run very fast which gives them a real edge over the survivors and that is very unsettling! In most books the zombies still move slow or some versions do, but having speedy zombies coming for your legs is pretty scary!
We follow several main characters in this book. Susan is the former wife of the Mayor. Unable to have kids she adopted two hispanic children to the horror of her racist husband and he divorced her. Today Susan is taking her six year old children to the clinic for the final vaccine that she has been putting off giving to them. She goes with her dad Carl/Grant (his name changes through the book which is annoying!) Having Grandpa with arthritis is horrific when the reader and Susan are screaming at him to run from the little buggers chasing them! It was nice to see someone with a normal ailment trying to deal with that in an apocalypse situation. Grandpa has a boat at Corpus Christi that would be the ideal escape but with so many kids around town, can they even get out of the clinic alive?
JW is former military who was medically discharged along with his injured military dog Ranger. Poor Ranger was injured by a bomb and lost some fur so he needs constant sunscreen to protect him. JW is always on the lookout for topping up his medication to allow himself to deal with his demons-something that is going to become totally required when he gets face to face with child zombies. Bonnie comes from a poor family with a grandmother with dementia, and is out grocery shopping with her when the outbreak starts in the store. She knows they has to get to her dad at his gas station job and then home to where it is safer but with meagre supplies, can they really survive?
There is Stephen, a doctor at the local hospital. His daughter is in bed sick, nursed by his wife. Now at the hospital he gets to see for himself that staff and patients are being bitten and eaten and is relieved that they are sealed in the emergency room. But it is going to take just one concerned member of staff trying to save a friend to let all the monsters out to rampage through the hospital. Dr Virginia Lynn is in her room at the clinic, trying to stay out of the way of the nurse that she hates but is too weak to fire. It is the clinic that Susan is at when all hell breaks loose. She then encounters a Mormon family who have decided that this apocalypse is a curse from God against sinners which disgusts Virginia and she is plotting how to get away from them before she ends up being taken with them to their Temple where other likeminded people will be.
Susan's best friend Sherry owns a kid clothing shop in town and she is there that morning. A regular customer is there with her two kids, one that is sick. Sherry is horrified to see the girl attack her mother in front of her and decides it is up to her to save the traumatized little boy Marty. Sherry is overweight and unfit and isn't a great fan of other people's children so this particular apocalypse is going to be a big challenge to her. She is also desperate to contact Susan to see if she is ok and worries about her friend Juan who has been out of town and does not own a mobile phone. I can totally relate to Juan as I don't own a mobile phone and they always seem to stop working in disasters anyway! I liked that Sherry was unfit and struggling as it makes her normal and vulnerable.
There are two dogs in this book-Ranger the military dog and Frank, a rottie that is rescued later in the book. I can happily confirm that both dogs do make it safely through this first book which made me happy. I loved the range of medical diversity in this book-Grandpa's arthritic legs, Sherry's obesity, Grandma with dementia, Ranger's skin issues, JW's PTSD. I liked seeing a truly poverty stricken family like Bonnie's too. I liked that some characters were also prone to a selfish urge to save themselves instead of playing hero to save others. It all added up to make the characters feel real and ordinary and I loved that. Even JW is not immune to making mistakes despite full military training. The characters are well developed and it really made me care about what was happening to them.
There is lots of exciting zombie action to enjoy in this book. The children are very scary as they move so fast and can hide in so many places! And think about where you live-how many neighbours have young kids? How many medical places, parks, playgrounds, schools, day care centres, community centres, grocery stores and other places where kids are seen are in your district? It is not going to be easy to avoid them and get away from them especially when they often attack in packs! It was pretty nerve shredding when characters are trying to get away from the monsters. I loved the mixture of tension and scary zombie attacks, the dangerous road trips and the challenge of grabbing supplies and hiding. The plot was exciting, and there was always something going on because of the changing scenes between each survivor so it never gets dull.
I loved the other zombie style book that Eli Constant wrote called Dead Trees so I was very keen to read this. These books have all the elements of zombie books but the monsters are never true zombies. The kids in this book don't die and come back zombie-they just go from sick to monster-but the adults do seem to be regular zombies. I liked that it did show a few differences from just straight zombies, as much as I love any kind of zombies! This was an excellent start to a series and I look forward to reading the rest of it which is already lurking on my bookshelves!
I've read a lot of zombie books in my time and there are usually a few child zombies that the characters struggle to take down. This is the first time that the main focus has been on zombie kids and man it was a bit of a scary ride! The kids turn from flu victims to beasts in a short period of time, giving no warning to their parents who are usually their first victims. I can imagine being paralysed by fear and confusion as you see your child change so quickly. I also found it interesting that the adults do seem to have some kind of intelligence after they are infected, and the infected parents grieve shockingly when their zombie kids die which was kind of heartbreaking to read. The children can run very fast which gives them a real edge over the survivors and that is very unsettling! In most books the zombies still move slow or some versions do, but having speedy zombies coming for your legs is pretty scary!
We follow several main characters in this book. Susan is the former wife of the Mayor. Unable to have kids she adopted two hispanic children to the horror of her racist husband and he divorced her. Today Susan is taking her six year old children to the clinic for the final vaccine that she has been putting off giving to them. She goes with her dad Carl/Grant (his name changes through the book which is annoying!) Having Grandpa with arthritis is horrific when the reader and Susan are screaming at him to run from the little buggers chasing them! It was nice to see someone with a normal ailment trying to deal with that in an apocalypse situation. Grandpa has a boat at Corpus Christi that would be the ideal escape but with so many kids around town, can they even get out of the clinic alive?
JW is former military who was medically discharged along with his injured military dog Ranger. Poor Ranger was injured by a bomb and lost some fur so he needs constant sunscreen to protect him. JW is always on the lookout for topping up his medication to allow himself to deal with his demons-something that is going to become totally required when he gets face to face with child zombies. Bonnie comes from a poor family with a grandmother with dementia, and is out grocery shopping with her when the outbreak starts in the store. She knows they has to get to her dad at his gas station job and then home to where it is safer but with meagre supplies, can they really survive?
There is Stephen, a doctor at the local hospital. His daughter is in bed sick, nursed by his wife. Now at the hospital he gets to see for himself that staff and patients are being bitten and eaten and is relieved that they are sealed in the emergency room. But it is going to take just one concerned member of staff trying to save a friend to let all the monsters out to rampage through the hospital. Dr Virginia Lynn is in her room at the clinic, trying to stay out of the way of the nurse that she hates but is too weak to fire. It is the clinic that Susan is at when all hell breaks loose. She then encounters a Mormon family who have decided that this apocalypse is a curse from God against sinners which disgusts Virginia and she is plotting how to get away from them before she ends up being taken with them to their Temple where other likeminded people will be.
Susan's best friend Sherry owns a kid clothing shop in town and she is there that morning. A regular customer is there with her two kids, one that is sick. Sherry is horrified to see the girl attack her mother in front of her and decides it is up to her to save the traumatized little boy Marty. Sherry is overweight and unfit and isn't a great fan of other people's children so this particular apocalypse is going to be a big challenge to her. She is also desperate to contact Susan to see if she is ok and worries about her friend Juan who has been out of town and does not own a mobile phone. I can totally relate to Juan as I don't own a mobile phone and they always seem to stop working in disasters anyway! I liked that Sherry was unfit and struggling as it makes her normal and vulnerable.
There are two dogs in this book-Ranger the military dog and Frank, a rottie that is rescued later in the book. I can happily confirm that both dogs do make it safely through this first book which made me happy. I loved the range of medical diversity in this book-Grandpa's arthritic legs, Sherry's obesity, Grandma with dementia, Ranger's skin issues, JW's PTSD. I liked seeing a truly poverty stricken family like Bonnie's too. I liked that some characters were also prone to a selfish urge to save themselves instead of playing hero to save others. It all added up to make the characters feel real and ordinary and I loved that. Even JW is not immune to making mistakes despite full military training. The characters are well developed and it really made me care about what was happening to them.
There is lots of exciting zombie action to enjoy in this book. The children are very scary as they move so fast and can hide in so many places! And think about where you live-how many neighbours have young kids? How many medical places, parks, playgrounds, schools, day care centres, community centres, grocery stores and other places where kids are seen are in your district? It is not going to be easy to avoid them and get away from them especially when they often attack in packs! It was pretty nerve shredding when characters are trying to get away from the monsters. I loved the mixture of tension and scary zombie attacks, the dangerous road trips and the challenge of grabbing supplies and hiding. The plot was exciting, and there was always something going on because of the changing scenes between each survivor so it never gets dull.
I loved the other zombie style book that Eli Constant wrote called Dead Trees so I was very keen to read this. These books have all the elements of zombie books but the monsters are never true zombies. The kids in this book don't die and come back zombie-they just go from sick to monster-but the adults do seem to be regular zombies. I liked that it did show a few differences from just straight zombies, as much as I love any kind of zombies! This was an excellent start to a series and I look forward to reading the rest of it which is already lurking on my bookshelves!
More...