Book Review: Response by Joseph A Coley

When Joe gets an early call in to work for a mining accident, he answers the call. An EMT for thirteen years, he is used to responding to the sick and injured. The accident, however, has released a toxic gas that not only kills the living in close proximity, it reanimates the dead as well. With his family fifty miles away across the mountains of Southwest Virginia, he enlists some of his fellow EMTs and paramedics to join him so he can get home safely. In the first book of the Six Feet From Hell series, Joe has to fight through the chaos of the undead to make his way home, praying that his wife and son will still be alive when he gets there...

My Review:
A massive mining explosion across several states releases a toxin into the air that kills the people exposed to it and EMT's like Joe and his colleagues are called to the disaster scene to help treat and then ferry the bodies. The task turns deadly when the dead bodies start coming back to life as zombies and attack the living. With things getting out of control, Joe and his friends have no option but to abandon their stations and find a way back to their families. Joe has a 30 mile journey that winds over a mountain route, and he fears for what he might find if he ever gets home.

Joe and his group are interesting and I liked following them around the area as they tried to help in the initial crisis. There were a couple of really obnoxious idiots amongst the EMT's but they are not major players in the whole book. It seems that Joe is pretty much cracking up under the pressure as he turns into a bad tempered, moody and violently unstable guy as the book progresses, which is a real shame as I much preferred him at the beginning. There are questionable decisions and I'm wondering how the guy shot in the hip is on his feet hours later and on a long march through the mountains, which seemed a bit unrealistic to me. I was still interested in what happened to the group on their journey in spite of the niggles but Joe's attitude was a bit off putting.

Joe's wife Buffy is at home when the crisis begins with their son Rickey, and contacts Joe's friend Chris further down the street. Chris decides to risk going on a supply run to a nearby grocery store for extra supplies, while Ashleigh is returning from work with the aim of linking up with both of them. The streets are already in complete carnage with rampaging zombies and people fleeing in panic. Buffey is also trying to work out how to protect her trailer home from the zombies while wondering about the condition of her family and friends. 

OK there are a few annoying things going on in this book that I need to mention. Everyone is very much aware of the need to be quiet inside the house and not attract zombie attention. Rickey gets barked at for raising his voice once but overall he is better than any of the adults! Chris and Buffey decide to dispatch a few zombies by roaring around on an ATV weilding a chainsaw to decapitate zombies. Lori and Ronnie arrive blaring their car horn which prompts Chris to run outside and start firing a gun at them then Buffey runs outside screaming in delight and loud conversations begin on the driveway! Then Chris decides to construct a tin can warning system which they are carrying around for ages before getting it done! 

Stupid decisions seem to follow them around too. Chris decides to move out of his flat and into the trailer which I wasn't sure was the best idea. I'd have thought a flat was safer than a trailer with zombies on the loose, and there would be fewer noise issues to deal with. There is also the fact that Chris was forever running back to his flat for weapons and for a medical kit-surely at the start of the outbreak, he should've got all that stuff moved with help from his friends BEFORE the zombies arrived and a crisis developed? If he had so much stuff he needed, moving Buffey's family to his flat was more sensible, at least as a temporary measure until Joe arrived home and they could plan their next move.

The main plot was interesting but there were too many things that had me rolling my eyes. Part of me is curious about where the story goes after the way the book finishes but the other part of me knows that there are certainly better zombie novels out there that would personally suit me better than this one. The writing style of the author was fine and he can put a story together so I'm not ruling out reading something else by him in the future. I just can't see me reading the next one in this series, at least not any time soon.

Read December 2019
2.5 stars.