Book Review: The Last Bastion of the Living by Rhiannon Frater

As long as the undead hordes of the Inferi Scourge howl outside the dying city, the last remaining humans struggle to survive inside The Bastion. Vanguard Maria Martinez has lived her entire life within the towering walls. Her only refuge from the overcrowded streets, rolling blackouts, and food shortages is in the arms of Officer Dwayne Reichardt. Then Maria is summoned to meet with a mysterious representative from the Science Warfare Division and is offered the opportunity to finally destroy the Inferi Scourge and reclaim the land and resources in the valley beyond the wall. If she succeeds, the city may be saved. But if she fails, humanity faces extinction…

My Review: 
Maria is a tough soldier, one of the many who protect the Bastion, the final walled city still to stand after the zombie apocalypse. The raging Inferi have broken through the outer gate and up to the inner walls but the only way the people can survive is to close the outer gate and kill every zombie in the valley. Maria is asked to take part in this new offensive and happily volunteers, as life in the Bastion is dark and grim with blackouts, crime and few pleasures, other than being with Dwayne. She has no idea that the most important details of the mission have been kept from her, things she would never have agreed to and now it is too late to change her mind. Her only hope of salvation now is to complete the deadly mission.  

I liked Maria as a character. She was a tough military woman who fought in the last attempt to defeat the Inferni which was a disaster that cost many lives. In the aftermath she and Dwayne recover from their injures, becoming friends and then lovers. He also understands her better than anyone but is fearful for her safety when she is asked to volunteer for the special mission without him. He was a good character and because both were well written from the start, despite my aversion to romance in the zombie apocalypse, I liked them as a couple. As Maria prepares to go away for several months, Dwayne comes up with an illegal way for them to stay in touch, something that is going to be a lifeline to Maria during the mission. What I liked is that they are an established couple and there is no angst or conflict to mess things up, just the dangers of the mission.

The people in charge of the mission are certain that they have invented a serum that allows the soldiers to walk among the Inferi without being recognised as prey, giving the humans a real advantage over the enemy and a real chance at winning the war. They would also be immune to the zombie bite. The only problem is, Maria will be the first person to try this new version of the serum before a group of other soldiers and scientists are subjected to it, and nobody knows how she will react to it. Maria is unaware of exactly what she is about to be subjected to. Dwayne is doing his own digging into the secret mission and is unhappy that he is being kept in the dark about it. He employs Maria's friend Lindsey, who was badly injured in the previous attack a year earlier and who fears for her friend's safety. He also gets help from the resourceful Petra. I liked both of these strong and intelligent women, which is a pleasant change from eye candy bimbo's and women who need rescuing by tough men all the time.

There is so much that I want to say about this book but if I give much more information about the plot, it would spoil all the twists. Let me just say that Maria and her team face challenges before they even get out into the valley to find the enemy. Once in the valley, their intel about both the serum and the zombies is not exactly what they were told and they need to adapt their plans and try to get the job done so they can come home again. There are dangers out in the valley that the team are unaware of and a whole side mission that only a few know about, all of which will cause trouble for Maria. Dwayne has his own problems as two teams of officials fight each other for control-law enforcement vs the military division who made the serum, and he fears that this will put Maria and her people in more danger and is determined to see law enforcement win.   

I loved the way the characters were all written and developed as I cared about most of them. I was caught up both in the zombie mission and the actual fight for control over the mission. I was rooting for all the MCs and really wanted to see Maria and Dwayne reunited. There were characters that grew on me or frustrated me or that I wanted to kill, but I enjoyed reading about all of them.The Inferi was the scary kind of traditional zombies that you expect to see in the book but there are a few surprises in that area through the book, twists that I continued to enjoy as they arrived. I loved the world-building. The Bastion is a safe haven from the Inferi but it a hard place to live. There are frequent blackouts, food shortages, crime and a lack of hope for the future. Things are starting to fall apart inside the walls so the only hope is to destroy the Inferi and have people living and working outside the walls in the valley again, protected by the outer gate. There was so much to enjoy in the book. In fact I can't really think of anything I disliked about it.

I was very satisfied by the actual ending and the way it was set up for the next book, which follows a different character as MC. I'm really looking forward to reading it as it is a character I like. It will be fun to visit the Bastion again!

Read May 2019
4 stars.