Chuckles Mini Review 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 some reviews from July and August.

1) Camille Picott-Dawn Patrol
A man with an obsession for long-distance running. A zombie outbreak that will put his endurance skills to the test.

It was just another training day for Niles. Getting ready for a one-hundred-mile footrace takes dedication. Twenty-five miles into his run and Niles is faced with the unthinkable. A campground overrun. People dead. Corpses reanimated, eating the living. With his skills and training, Niles could outrun the zombies. But when he stops to help two hunters, he needs to slow his pace and teach them to run. Can endurance running be taught on the go? Will they make it out alive?

Dawn Patrol is the prequel to the Undead Ultra series. This action-packed zombie adventure takes running for your life to the extreme.

Niles is enjoying his training for the ultimate endurance race and an opportunity to take plant photos during the run to make a virtual bouquet for his girlfriend. All of this goes out the window when he gets to a campground that seems to be full of chaos and terror and it doesn't take long for him to realise that the place is swarming with zombies. He decides that there are people in need of help and sets about a plan to try and save the few survivors that seem to be left, going to the aid of a teenage boy. They find his father out on a hunting trail as they make their escape but can he get the two of them moving quick enough to stay with him and ahead of the zombies on a run back to where he packed his car?

I liked this because it was different. I'm not a runner of any description nor do I have interest in endurance running as a book topic but I very much liked this. We get to know Niles on the start of his run, learning about his struggles to get fit and his delight to be accepted into the race. It means hard training but he enjoys it. I liked him as a character because he is a normal guy who could use his skills to escape unseen but instead tries to help save others. I liked the tension of the three of them on the run, trying to escape the zombie hordes and get to the car many miles away. It would take real effort for the hunters to quickly learn to run even when the pain is overwhelming them. I liked that plot. We also get the terror of the zombie attack on the campground which was fun in a sick twisted way. 

Overall I very much liked the way the story was put together and I was quick to root for the main three characters. The story kept me interested right through and had a few nice zombie attack moments. As soon as I read this I got the first full length book in the series 'Undead Ultra' and I look forward to reading it.

Read July 2020
4 stars.  

2) Charlie Dalton-Typhoid Mary
Recently bereaved detective Nadine Meyers is assigned to investigate a brutal massacre, with eight-year-old Mary the sole survivor.

Nadine suspects the parents were responsible for murdering all six of their adopted children in a single horrendous act. As she befriends Mary, she discovers a secret that takes the case in a whole new direction, one she could never have imagined.

A nosy neighbour gets more than she bargained for when she goes to investigate a child screaming at the farm next door. There has been a massacre of six children and two adults, with the only survivor being an eight year old girl. She is taken to the police station where police and social workers wait to hear what happened. One of the people there is Nadine, who recently lost her own child to cancer, and she feels sympathy for the girl. But the more that the authorities talk to Mary, the stranger the case becomes and the more upset Mary gets.

I admit that while it was a decent enough short story, it was the same as quite a few I'd read before and the ending was very predictable and not personally satisfying to me. A second massacre was what readers were expecting at the end so I'd have liked to have seen something different. I'd have liked to see someone putting a stop to it, finding out what happened to the neighbour, someone realising what Mary is doing...I don't know, just something different. Instead it went exactly the way I expected and was perhaps a bit of an anti-climax.

Read August 2020
2.5 stars.

3) Charlie Dalton-Bug Out
An elite military unit is sent to a remote human colony to investigate a communication blackout. Rigel 4 was the setting for our victory over the Bugs. We claimed the territory and installed a colony. We haven’t heard from them in over a month. Something was wrong. Setting down, we search the colony. No shots had been fired. Children’s toys lay scattered. Clothes hang on washing lines. Meals sit half-finished on desks piled high with papers. The colonists had vanished without a trace. Then we hear something, something none of have heard since the Ultimate Victory.

Chitter. The sound of Bugs. They’re back.

This book is clearly meant as a sort of homage to Aliens with the bug element of Starship Troopers to it. A war was fought against the bugs and we won, taking all their planets and resources for ourselves. Now, a colony has gone silent and nobody knows why, so the military send a unit to discover what is happening. While exploring in the tunnels the answers come-the bugs are not wiped out after all and now the team need to work out why the bugs are there, where the colony have vanished to and how the bugs can be destroyed before they can leave the planet.

There were plenty of Aliens moments in this book. The crashed ship being called Nostromo, several famous lines from the film being used by these characters, the way the colony vanish and the hope of destroying the site from orbit. It was a bit of fun I think. The book uses flashbacks to tell the reader about what happened at certain points in the war and how victory was achieved and I actually found that interesting, though I'd prefer more show than tell. The characters were good and the plot twist was also enjoyable. 

Read August 2020
3 stars.