Sunday 2 November 2014

Book Reviews: The Reapers are the Angels and Zone One.

Not done a great deal this week. Been to knackered to to get any painting done having the kids around at half term has been great but tiring lol. Not been in the mood to write up the batrep. Hopefully I'll have it done for Wednesday's post.


Been mostly reading this week. I've read and thoroughly enjoyed 'The Reapers are the Angels' by Alden Bell a zombie novel about a young girl and her life and travels across what is left of America. It has a Southern twang to its reading which I really love in books set in America especially zombie fiction. This isn't a book where its all about zombies they are more kind of a backdrop to the trials and tribulations that the girl 'Temple' goes through. It has some quite interesting characters in it and has plenty of action to keep you going. I give it 4 out of 5 stars It had me hooked from the first chapter and I couldn't put it down.




The next book I've been reading (mostly last week) is Zone One by Colson Whitehead. The main jist of the story is about a team of Sweepers searching for remaining zombies in abandoned buildings after the Marines have torn through the city killing off most of the zombies numbers.

I have to say it was boring as hell I just couldn't finish it I managed to get halfway through by just forcing myself to read it but It was tiresome to read and just didn't grab my attention in anyway. The action (what little I read) was flat and uninteresting and as for the characters themselves well there was little or no love or hate found for them which makes it even harder to read as there is nobody to to hope for or dislike. Its written in a very intelligent way but seems to focus on snippets of the characters past events during the early days of the collapse but then even so its doesn't make you like them any more. Some scenes are just so strange.

 I gave it 2 out of 5 stars.

It would be interesting to see if any of you who follow this blog have read it and what you thought of it

Normal service will resume in the week.


14 comments:

  1. Simon, I've not read either of those titles, or rather listened to them, as these days I simply do audio books. But if you want an action-packed zed survivor horror I'd recommend the Mountain Man series by Keith Blackmore. The first (short) story is a free d/l and actually stopped me painting - it was so good. Looking forward to normal service resuming :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cheers for the recommendation I shall check it out!

      Delete
  2. I've not read these but I have heard a lot of good things about The Reapers are the Angels.
    I'm currently reading Aftertime, my first zombie novel in a few months.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I haven't read The Reapers are Angels but I have it on my must buy reading list. I have, however, read Zone One, and I thought it was okay. Not particularly bad and by no means one of the better zombie novels I've read but I found it passable. Actually, I didn't mind all the flashbacks. You are right about the characters not being particularly sympathetic or even memorable. They certainly have not stuck in my mind.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Definitely going to have a look at The Reapers.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I will look out for the books, especially the first one. The book Blaxkleric suggested is good too. I have listened to the first one (which was actually written after the first book) and it was a good story.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cool will do. See what you think of Zone One ;)

      Delete
  6. I haven't read Reapers...but I have read Zone 1. It was ok, as Vampifan said... I recently tried to reread it, but couldn't get through it a second time. I wonder if that's because I knew what would happen and the character interplay just wasn't interesting enough to keep my attention?

    Zombie Chow

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I tried ever so hard with it and just gave up in the end. It started out quite promising.

      Delete
  7. I have read many many books in my lifetime but I can honestly say I have yet to read any zombie theme books. Hmmmm ... maybe I could get started soon, I am currently eyeing one called Night of the Living Trekkies.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sounds like a plan its a slippery slope from here!

      Delete