Book Review: Flu by Wayne Simmons (Flu #1)

There's a nasty flu going round. An epidemic, they call it. The posters say to cover your mouth when you sneeze, and throw away the tissue. But such simple measures won't help.

Because when you catch this flu, armed police come and lock you in your house to die alone. When you catch this flu, it kills you in days. And two hours after it's killed you, your eyelids snap open again...

FLU is a pacey, terrifying, frighteningly real zombie horror story.

My Review:

I have always loved picking up zombie or flu virus apocalypse books and I picked this up with a pile of similar books. I did not find this to be one of the better ones. In fact it was a bit of a let down.

The problem lies with attention to detail and a lack of world building. I don't mean that I need a description of everything that is seen but most people when reading a zombie novel want to know how the people became infected. Nuclear war, bio-terrorism, infected water supply, vaccine gone wrong, virus etc are all favourites but really you can have ANYTHING as a cause. So in this case it is a flu. So why is it causing zombies? What is it that reanimates the dead? It is kind of important that you share it with the reader! Having that smug sort of 'I know how it happened but I'm not telling you' thing is not good and is going to hack off your readers. Details!!! We want details! Instead we are left in the dark and wondering why the author isn't giving us the detail we want.

When there is a little bit of explaining, it seems to be confused and contradict itself. If the zombies are just shells with basically no senses, how have they become so good at just turning up where the fresh meat happen to be? This is what I mean by attention to detail. I really want the author to just involve us in the story instead of holding us at arms length for whatever reason. It was too difficult to connect with the story and the characters when we kept questioning everything. There also seems to be little threat as long as you don't behave like a total idiot. You don't get that tension and delicious fear for the characters that you get in the really good zombie books. There was no real excitement or mega scary scenes for me.

I didn't like the characters either. They were pretty one dimensional and poorly developed, and they seemed intent on talking nonsense the whole time. The people just hang around until it's time to scrounge some supplies and it just wasn't greatly interesting. I think the author went for trying to be less zombie horror and more gritty realism but it just ended up pretty boring.

OK so maybe we get more explained in the next book in the series. I hope so, so that those who continue with it finally get some answers. Sadly, I won't be one of them as there wasn't really anything in the book that made me want to stick with it.

Reading with Chuckles #25

Welcome to Reading with Chuckles! This is where I fill you in on what I'm reading each week-what it is, where I got it or heard about it, what I think of it, if I'm continuing with it or abandoning it and any special offers I'm aware of where you can try the book yourself. Comments are welcome but no spoilers please! It's not fair to other readers!

Another good reading week has passed despite a viral infection trying to spoil things for me! It was nothing serious just enough to make me tired and grumpy but I still got the reading finished. I read 5 Harry Potter shorts that appeared on Pottermore, 7 books and 2 short stories, and abandoned 4 books. All good news for the tbr! I'm just about to hit my February target of getting it down to 550 books to read. I hope to hit 500 by the end of March if all goes really well.

So what did I think of the books? I loved the artwork for Fungus and the bits where he scares people are funny but overall it felt like one big info dump that kept getting in the way of the story. Not greatly impressed. Marco seemed to be less about the chef and more about what the food critics write about his food-not exactly exciting. Desert Children spent most of its time blaming the west for FGM still existing which really hacked me off. Boggy Creek and Murder of Crows were average and 100 Bigfoot nights was ok but lacked anything really scary. Til death was a very average free zombie short story but I enjoyed Voyage of the dead a lot better. Book of the week, however was the excellent dystopian The Testing. Fans of The Hunger Games may well like this one as much as I did.

ABANDONED BOOKS:
Countdown had the usual I-hate-you instaluv plotline that fries my last nerve and copies aspects from at least four different films so there was nothing original in it. Dustlands #1 had an obnoxious MC and I disliked the writing style, Realm Walker had a dreadful love triangle with a complete asshat in it and Raising Hell had more f bombs than a Foul Mouthed Git Convention. 

Book Review: Vicious by Bryan W Alaspa

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A QUIET, RELAXING, WEEKEND GETAWAY... The cabin is not deserted. It is the summer retreat of Jeremy Liden, an author who has just started to taste the fruits of success and the good life, which includes the summer cottage in Wisconsin. The same weekend Jeremy and his friends decide to get away from it all two dogs seek shelter beneath the summer house porch. Two dogs who have been trained to fight. Trained to Attack. Trained to kill. What Jeremy and his friends find at the house is sheer, snarling terror, and as things get desperate, they begin to wonder if they will ever get out alive. Nature made these dogs, but man made them VICIOUS.

My Review:
Ok, lets start with the good things. The book is well written and the author does a good job of building up the tension as you wonder where and when the dogs are going to attack. The action scenes are detailed and you can easily picture in your head what is going on. The style of writing is uncomplicated and the story flows pretty well. There are exciting bits, there are creepy tense bits and there are killer dogs. Sounds like a good plan for a horror book to me. Actually anything with teeth is a good plan...

I liked the plot itself and it was easy to imagine how you would respond to the situation if you were in it. I'm pretty sure that any plan that you or I came up with would be better than the very dumb things that these idiots were thinking up. I'm not going into details as it would ruin the whole plot but you really need to think through your plans before opening doors and windows or crap is going to happen! I'm all for the characters trying things and having the plans go wrong but these people were doing idiot things that would NEVER work and left me rolling my eyes when it went bad. I found that point a bit frustrating. I think if you are yelling at the book about 'that's stupid!' or 'what are you THINKING?'at least it means you are engaged with the book, which is better than not getting into it at all. So this did not in any way spoil the book.

So, plot niggles? I understand that the whole point of the book was to have them all trapped in the cabin so I can forgive the men not jumping back into the car where they are attacked to drive off for help while the girls barricade themselves inside. From a plot point of view there would be no story if that happened so that was ok. It was other plot things that didn't quite make sense. Every one of the four left their mobile phones and handbags in the car as they went to unlock the door to the cabin. Um, no...Every female I know who carries a phone or bag would instinctively lift those as they exited the car and THEN think about suitcases and bags of supplies. Every guy I know would shove the phone in a pocket and then grab the bags. We already know that cell phone coverage is spotty near the cabin so there was no need to have them leave the things in the car. It just isn't realistic for four young professionals to all leave their phones in the car! Minor issue though.

The characters were a bit of a mixture. I didn't have any great feelings one way or the other for Jeremy and Amelia. That might sound like a problem but in a short horror novel you don't need to love the characters to like the plot. I did like Veronica. She was smart without being snotty and she pretty much deserved a medal putting up with Stephen for so long. Seriously, Stephen was a complete arse in the opening chapters. He's divorcing his wife because she has changed her mind about giving up her career to have his kids-and the way he keeps calling her a deal breaking and saying she knew what was expected of her when they married makes her sound like a brood mare! And of course he would never give up his precious career if the roles were reserved. He forces her to go along on this holiday when she doesn't want to go, he annoys Jeremy all the way to the cabin by messing with the radio, moaning about the lack of facilities and lecturing Jeremy for being able to live without things like TIVO and GPS. He is a complete moron. The gardener is a foul mouthed idiot who moans about doing the job he is paid to do. The cop is a lazy git. The female cop is clueless how to do her job.

To be fair to the author, the characters totally changed when the crisis occured, as would happen when things go so badly wrong. Jeremy went from leader to making dumb mistakes while Veronica came up with ideas that were all shot down by the others. However it was Stephen who became the big brave hero which makes me forgive the author for those first chapters. I guess for him to be heroic we needed to dislike him first! So he redeems himself nicely.

One thing that did really annoy me was the alternative ending. The author chose to write a book with killer dogs, knowing that for the humans to win, the dogs had to be injured or killed. Then he puts in an afterword that apologizes for his story, his declarations that he loves dogs, and a rewritten ending which was really bad. It was as if he was forced to write the story and was now issuing a disclaimer. So why write it in the first place? I mean, it was made clear during the book that the dogs went bad because of human ill treatment-in fact it was mentioned every couple of pages and got a bit wearing after a while. We get all the main characters having sympathy for the dogs all the way through it to the point of me thinking, just let them eat you then! Why write it if you didn't want to write about dogs being hurt> That was just weird.

My other big thing was the 'oh I better shove in a sex scene somewhere'. WTF? There is a mauled dead body outside, two of you have been mauled by killer dogs minutes before, you are totally trapped-so lets have sex even though he is still bleeding over her??? Yes I'd feel dead horny in THAT situation. It added nothing to the story, it felt so out of place and it wasn't even a great sex scene. Pointless really.

Overall it was a decent short read with good horror moments if you can forgive it for a few shortcomings. 

Stacking the Shelves #71

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga’s Reviews

Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical store or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts and of course ebooks! Click on the link under the book to find its page on Goodreads or Smashwords.

                  

Please note that I always leave a message on your STS/SP if you visit me, but if you use DISQUS or a similar third party I will not be able to leave a comment on your page. And sometimes, I have problems leaving messages on blogs hosted by Wordpress. 

Hello and welcome to a new week! Can you believe it's the middle of February already??? Time flies when you're having lots of booky fun! Yes I'm pleased to report that I haven't hit a reading slump yet and I'm still happy with progress. My aim was to get the tbr down to 550 books by the end of February and I'm only 2 books away from that target at the moment, which is exciting! My next target is to hit 500 tbrs left by the end of March. Fingers crossed I get close to it. We'll see how it goes!

This week has been a good reading week despite having a minor viral cold thing that has left me really tired. Thankfully, my books have all been tempting enough that I've been able to keep reading, though a bit slower than usual! I've picked up some vampires and zombies this week which is always exciting- I might need to split them over two STS to stop me buying more this week! I have a couple of books ordered that are coming from America so I'm not sure if they will make it to next STS or if they will come later. Exciting times though when you know those books are coming!

 

Lets look then at what I got this week. The Owl and the Japanese Circus is one that I've seen everywhere over the last few months and I'm curious enough to give it a go. It sounds a bit different anyway. I've read the first book in the series by John G Hartness and it was funny and action packed, so I took the chance to grab a few more in the series. Raising Hell is a novella in the world of Dracula so I thought I'd give that one a try and see if I like it. I plan to tackle it this week hopefully. And who can resists zombies on the Titanic?

 

DOWNLOADS:

 

 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23213197-owl-and-the-japanese-circus 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10616880-back-in-black 

 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12298461-knight-moves

 

 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18592204-paint-it-black 

 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24465096-raising-hell---a-quincy-harker-demon-hunter-novella

 

 

 

 

BOUGHT PAPERBACKS:

 

 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13615312-deck-z

 

FOLLOW ME:

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3426724-chucklesthescot 

http://chucklesbookcave.blogspot.co.uk/  

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https://twitter.com/chucklesthescot 

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Book Review: The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness (Chaos Walking #1)

Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him -- something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn't she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? Propelled by Todd's gritty narration, readers are in for a white-knuckle journey in which a boy on the cusp of manhood must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is.

My Review:
I really looked forward to this book and heard so many great things about it-great dystopia, gripping plot with everone able to hear each others thoughts, great characters and a cool talking dog! Ooh it sounded like exactly my kind of book. Until I started reading it.

Lets start with Todd. Frankly the boy is a little shit. He is a troublemaker with no respect for the people trying to keep him safe and is determined to keep getting into trouble for not following the rules. He has a sweet dog called Manchee that he can communicate with but he treats the dog like crap. He never wanted the dog and hates having to put up with it all the time for company, so what does he do? He slaps the poor dog around. If there is one thing I hate in my MCs it is cruelty to animals. I wish Manchee had torn the git's throat out but sadly that doesn't happen.

So Todd has to go on the run to stay alive once he has uncovered the secrets that the adults are trying to hide. What a shame they didn't do it. There is nothing to like about this boy and for me there was no redeeming features about him. No charm, no humour, nothing. Just a cruel and angry boy yelling at his dog and sulking all the time. The other characters we come across are not really any better. Our heroine has no real depth or personality about her though granted she is a better person than Todd, which wouldn't be difficult.

Then we have the fact that everyone talks in slang which I find really offputting in a book. I am a naturally fast reader and when I'm enjoying a book I can read it quickly-and yes I do read every word! But when I have to keep stopping to reread words or work out what the hell they are talking about, it doesn't just slow me down, it interrupts the flow of the book and that reduces my enjoyment of the reading experience. I didn't get why we had to have the slang and for me it added nothing to an already slow and turgid plot. Then we had the jumbled and incomprehensible thoughts of everyone Todd came into contact with-yes I know that was a big part of the plot but having it all jumbled up in one big nose in amongst the slang was just annoying. There are also pages full of scribbles that there seemed to be no point to and I rapidly lost interest in the whole thing.

When you add in the dead enemy that they fought with that wasn't really explained, I just thought the whole thing was a confusing mess. Maybe you find out more about all that later on but I wasn't interested enough to stick around to find out. It was actually when I read the reviews of other readers that I found out what happened later in the series-which makes me very glad that I didn't continue. What the author chose to do to the one decent character would have had me throwing away the book in disgust at that point. So I'm glad I didn't get that far.

I'm not going to be reading anything else by this author as I found his writing to be the opposite of what I like to read. It just wasn't for me in any way.