Chuckles Mini Reviews Catchup

I review everything I read, on my blog and on Goodreads. Most reviews are of a decent length but sometimes you don't have much to say about the book because of its length or you DNFed it or various other reasons. In cases like that it makes sense to write a few mini reviews in one post and clear them out your way! So lets catch up with reviews from earlier this year.

1) Catt Dahman-George's Terms (Z is for Zombie #1)
Set in Texas, most of the world’s population comes down with an infection with hemorrhagic effects that cause massive bleeding and then coma. Only, no one dies. The engineered infection has a nasty surprise waiting as prions cause holes to form in the brain and the enraged victims to go after loved ones and friends to feed and spread the infection. Quickly, the infected outnumber the healthy.

George, an older, retired policeman and his three elderly friends are suddenly called back into service along with a rag-tag group of survivors trying to get trained well enough to rescue all the survivors they keep finding. A retired Marine, Len, gathers his team with reluctance: Julia: a hot-tempered Hispanic girl, Alex: a gay man, Beth: a woman unsure of her place in the world, Roy: a racist with a bad attitude, Kimball: a quiet cowboy, and many others.

The story follows the strong characterizations as each survivor battles external forces and their own inner fears and morality; every action and choice now is far-reaching, they discover, and nothing is as simple as before.

I very much liked the start of the book with the retired men taking on the zombies and finding that their health puts them at a disadvantage. They try to help other people and then join up with a second group who are setting up a small community inside the hospital and gathering supplies and survivors from the local community. It is when everyone linked up that George and his friends went into the background of the story and barely featured, which was pretty disappointing. Instead we got racists and stupid idiots trying to take control of the group. 

Roy is a racist who stubbornly refuses to accept that a nuclear warhead exploding was not just an earthquake when they all see the mushroom cloud. Bryan was a sexist pig and everyone else seemed amused by his constant sexual harrassment of an irate Beth which made me mad. Len, the group leader turns out to be spineless when dealing with the idiots plotting against him and wanting to open the doors after a nuclear blast to get some air. Arnie is so thick that he can't tell the difference between a survivor and and a zombie with a gaping chest cavity wound. I got tired of the whiny idiots who don't seem to grasp what a zombie apocalypse and nuclear bombs mean. I DNFed around 50% of the book.

DNF January 2019
2 stars

2) Alex Hughes-Clean
I used to work for the Telepath’s Guild before they kicked me out for a drug habit that wasn’t entirely my fault. Now I work for the cops, helping Homicide Detective Isabella Cherabino put killers behind bars. My ability to get inside the twisted minds of suspects makes me the best interrogator in the department. But the normals keep me on a short leash. When the Tech Wars ripped the world apart, the Guild stepped up to save it. But they had to get scary to do it—real scary. Now the cops don’t trust the telepaths, the Guild doesn’t trust me, a serial killer is stalking the city—and I’m aching for a fix. But I need to solve this case. Fast. I’ve just had a vision of the future: I’m the next to die.

I read and very much enjoyed the prequel story for this series which is why I got this one but I admit to being disappointed with it. The MC who is not initially named is a recovering drug addict who keeps a stash in his home ready to use. He is also a telepath, kicked out of his job, who uses his talents to help a police detective solve her strangest cases and get confessions from suspects. The telepath part is very interesting and the setting of a futuristic Atlanta was a bit different but that is where the good things end for me.

The MC is very whiny about his situation and on virtually every page we are reminded of his habit and his addiction problems and I soon got tired of hearing about it. He was thinking about it, dealing with it and talking about it constantly and it bored me. His detective friend Isabella is the bitchy, rude, grumpy steriotype homocide detective who breaks rules when it suits her and is forever bitching at everyone. While I liked the MCs in the prequel, I got tired of both of them in this longer offering. It seems that later in the book the telepath starts pining for Isabella in a love manner so I'm kind of glad that I never got to that. I never felt any spark between them and she never seems to even like him. I also felt that we were sort of thrown into the futuristic Atlanta without a great deal of worldbuilding which left me feeling a bit adrift from the story. I just didn't connect with either the characters or the plot and I didn't quite get the whole description of Mindspace which I found confusing. Just not my thing. 

DNF January 2019
2 stars

3) Hunter Shea-The Devil's Fingers (OSEA #3)
WHAT HAS LONG PINK FINGERS AND SMELLS LIKE ROTTING FLESH?
It is a slime-covered fungus known for its pinkish red tentacles and pungent odor. It is indigenous to Australia but has spread to North America. Its Latin name is Clathrus Archeri, also known as Octopus Stinkhorn. Most people call it The Devil’s Fingers . . .

I DON’T KNOW BUT IT’S GROWING ON YOUR NECK.
Deep in the woods of Washington, botanist Autumn Winters stumbles onto a field of the luridly colored fungi. Two of her fellow campers make the mistake of touching it. Now it’s growing on them. Fleshy gelatinous pods. Sprouting from their skin. Feeding on their blood . . .

AND IT’S STILL GROWING.
Autumn watches in horror as her friends are transformed into monstrosities—grotesque, human-fungal hybrids as contagious and deadly as any virus. Autumn knows she must destroy these mutations before they return to civilization. But if there’s one thing that spreads faster than fear, it’s The Devil’s Fingers . . .

I loved all three of the Mail Order Massacres books by the author and a lot of his full length novels but I admit that I haven't loved this series of novellas titled as One Size Eats All. In Jurassic Florida and in this one I found the same issues, though Rattus New Yorkus was better. I like the idea of any kind of slithering nasty mass whether gliding over a lake or growing in a field like in this book. I liked what it actually did to the people and the actual plot interested me. Who wouldn't want to read about pods with pink tentacles that infect anyone who touches it? It is two of our group going off for some fun that night while drunk who don't notice where they have went who get infected and bring it back to the camp. I liked the idea.

What I didn't like were the characters. I honestly found myself not giving a damn about any of them. There was a feeling of angst throughout the group with the typical bickering that you get when a group of teens are out camping and getting drunk and high. I did wonder that they couldn't restrain themselves cosidering that they were out there so one of the group could scatter the ashes of his beloved dad in the lake. His friends seemed more intent on having a good time than supporting him. I can't say that I cared much for any of the characters in the book so I wasn't that bothered when they started dying off. I felt that after the initial infection, the book seemed to meander along as we waited for everyone to die. It wasn't the best offering from the author sadly but it doesn't put me off reading his other upcoming books or back catalogue.

Read February 2019
2 stars