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A review by l0chjessm0nster
Apocalypse Z: The Wrath of the Just by Pamela Carmell, Manel Loureiro
2.0
This apocalyptic series started out as a chilling, action-packed fight for survival against zombies but quickly became a fight for political power crossing multiple countries.
It starts in the mainland of Spain, in a narrative-style POV, focussed on a widowed lawyer who lives with his cat. The lawyer is driven to leave his house and journey to the Canary Islands, where he believes his survival lies, all the while coming into contact with zombies of all sizes. He meets up with Ukrainian Prit and together they find a hospital where two women have been living since the outbreak. A forest fire forces them to leave, and Prit uses his prior pilot talents to fly them away in a helicopter. End book one.
The second book picks up with the four survivors (and an added love story that was previously squashed in the first installment due to the large age difference of multiple decades) tooling around Southern Europe and Africa, trying to get close enough to one of the islands off the coast. Their fuel gets them 99.9% of the way there, but they're forced to land in the airport of a zombie-ridden island, one island over from a safe haven. They get saved in the nick of time and are introduced into a society where the people are fighting a civil war, and the lawyer, the Ukrainian, and the seventeen-year old girl (hello, love interest!) get sucked up into the politics and hijack a boat to escape. End book two.
The third book starts with the three boat-hijackers getting caught in a hurricane, when a huge tanker makes its way to them, and they somehow manage to speargun a rope on board to climb up. Insert religious and racist zealot who controls a town in Georgia by saying all nonwhites are unholy, and forces the "unholy" to do all of the dangerous work involving zombies on an up-close-and-personal level. Of course, this leads to the crew being devided between those who believe in the prophet and those who think this racism is insane. Anyone seeing the "civil war that ultimately destroys the safe haven" troupe going on here? The oil tanker returns to Georgia and meanwhile, in North Korea, they devise a plan to steal the oil. That is not a joke. It's out of nowhere and really adds nothing to the plot. Everything that the Koreans caused would have happened on its own without them. All it did was confuse everyone fighting in the final battle, which involved multiple tanks, Humvees, Molotov cocktails, and so many different battling sides that you had to constantly try to keep track of who was on each side and what they were fighting for. Between the religious zealot and his Aryan nation minions, the extorted and oppressed nonwhites, the rebelling whites, and the North Koreans, it's easy to forget that this is in apocalyptic Georgia with zombies closing in on every side. Bombs are exploding, shots are being fired, mines are being deployed, and fires are being set, but no one worries that maybe the town that has been safe for so long won't hold up. I'm sorry, did I mention the numerous BOMBS? Blowing up the city?
This series started out with an intense and thrilling zombie book, but ended with a battle for power with countless sides and an under-thought through conclusion.
It starts in the mainland of Spain, in a narrative-style POV, focussed on a widowed lawyer who lives with his cat. The lawyer is driven to leave his house and journey to the Canary Islands, where he believes his survival lies, all the while coming into contact with zombies of all sizes. He meets up with Ukrainian Prit and together they find a hospital where two women have been living since the outbreak. A forest fire forces them to leave, and Prit uses his prior pilot talents to fly them away in a helicopter. End book one.
The second book picks up with the four survivors (and an added love story that was previously squashed in the first installment due to the large age difference of multiple decades) tooling around Southern Europe and Africa, trying to get close enough to one of the islands off the coast. Their fuel gets them 99.9% of the way there, but they're forced to land in the airport of a zombie-ridden island, one island over from a safe haven. They get saved in the nick of time and are introduced into a society where the people are fighting a civil war, and the lawyer, the Ukrainian, and the seventeen-year old girl (hello, love interest!) get sucked up into the politics and hijack a boat to escape. End book two.
The third book starts with the three boat-hijackers getting caught in a hurricane, when a huge tanker makes its way to them, and they somehow manage to speargun a rope on board to climb up. Insert religious and racist zealot who controls a town in Georgia by saying all nonwhites are unholy, and forces the "unholy" to do all of the dangerous work involving zombies on an up-close-and-personal level. Of course, this leads to the crew being devided between those who believe in the prophet and those who think this racism is insane. Anyone seeing the "civil war that ultimately destroys the safe haven" troupe going on here? The oil tanker returns to Georgia and meanwhile, in North Korea, they devise a plan to steal the oil. That is not a joke. It's out of nowhere and really adds nothing to the plot. Everything that the Koreans caused would have happened on its own without them. All it did was confuse everyone fighting in the final battle, which involved multiple tanks, Humvees, Molotov cocktails, and so many different battling sides that you had to constantly try to keep track of who was on each side and what they were fighting for. Between the religious zealot and his Aryan nation minions, the extorted and oppressed nonwhites, the rebelling whites, and the North Koreans, it's easy to forget that this is in apocalyptic Georgia with zombies closing in on every side. Bombs are exploding, shots are being fired, mines are being deployed, and fires are being set, but no one worries that maybe the town that has been safe for so long won't hold up. I'm sorry, did I mention the numerous BOMBS? Blowing up the city?
This series started out with an intense and thrilling zombie book, but ended with a battle for power with countless sides and an under-thought through conclusion.