Reviews

Virginia Day Zero by Sean Cregan

vikingwolf's review

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2.0

When Uncle Don calls the police about what he has seen out in one of his fields, he doesn't want his visiting nephews to see it. Of course this just makes Murphy and Rory even keener to find out what it is and they rush over on theie bikes to the field. What they find there is a field full of mutilated cows who have been ripped apart by something. The nervous boys decide to leave but the monsters who did it see them and start to give chase. It is only with a bit of help that they manage to get away and it quickly becomes clear that the entire town is being attacked.

I don't want to say any more about this as it would give away the entire plot of the book. It is a spin off story of sorts. According to the author, this plot was originally in the main book but he was told to remove it so it has been resurrected as a short story spin off. My problem with it is that it lacked the detail about what these things were (they are actually aliens) and I had an idea in my head of them being part dinosaur part porcupine! Perhaps the lack of description was merely an oversight as it was originally built into the bigger story which I assume will cover more about these alien creatures.

The other issue I had was the dreadful lack of editing. I can generally ignore the odd spelling mistake but this has garbled sentences throughout which make it hard to work out what was being said, and has parts of words and sentences missing. Such a short story should make it easy to proof read before publication so I wasn't impressed with that.

I do think the story of this and the main novel sound interesting. I like the sound of these aliens and the way that they hunt. I did consider perhaps reading Day Zero to see what I thought but noticed that it was published in 2012 and there is no sign of a second book in the series depite Day Zero being marked as Day Zero #1. I don't want to commit to starting a series if the sequels are not going to be coming.

jen286's review

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4.0

This review was originally posted to Jen in Bookland

Virginia Day Zero is a quick read, but I really enjoyed it. Two kids overhear their uncle calling the sheriff after finding something in his field and they go to investigate. Only whatever is happening is bigger than they knew and the are now running for their lives. There are monsters out there, creepy things that seem to be multiplying, and they don't really know what to do.

Even though it is not very long it was sufficiently creepy for me. The monsters seem pretty cool and I want to read Day Zero now to find out more. A quick read, but entertaining.

hannahslibrary92's review

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3.0

Pretty good story. I enjoyed it.

inlibrisveritas's review

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3.0

Virginia Day Zero was one of my sleep deprived induced picks where I end up downloading Kindle books like they are going out of style. So I had no idea that this a side story to the novel Day Zero, nevertheless the short story does pretty well as a stand alone read. The only downside to not reading the novel first is that you don’t get the depth or the information about the odd creatures that have shown up. It did piqued my curiosity quite a bit though and I might pick up Day Zero eventually. The horror aspect is no really scary so much as it’s an adrenaline fueled race to survive and get away from the monsters, and seeing as this only has about 20 pages the ride is over quickly. I liked the interesting and unique monsters and I think the writing was actually really nice, it’s detailed enough and flows quickly. This isn’t a short story where you can expect to have all or most of your questions answered, in fact it really doesn’t explain much of anything, but I enjoyed it and didn’t really want it to end where it did.
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