Literary rating: ★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆½
The literary rating is mostly down to the sluggish way in which this gets going. Though having subsequently discovered this is the first in a fourteen volume series, it’s perhaps understandable if the author decided to slow-play things in the early stages. Still, as a standalone read, it definitely takes a while to get to the good stuff. By which I mean, human vs. zombie action. This takes place well after the zombie apocalypse, with the epidemic having been contained, and indeed, commodified, Zombies are kept in a formerly infected area of Long Island, now cordoned off to the public, where a company called Arc Entertainment allows the very rich to control them through implants, and fight to the (un)death.
There are other elements too, though these don’t have a significant role in this volume. For instance, everyone is mandated to have a “kill switch” fitted in their head, for use by the government if there were to be another outbreak. Or, after death, you can be resurrected as a zombie and conscripted into the military, or other public service. I presume these will come into play in later volumes. Here, it’s the story of Jessie Daniels and her friends, moderately disaffected young people who decide to break into the restricted zone on Long Island, for a variety of reasons, from boredom to a desire to hack the game from the inside. Needless to say, the expedition does not go smoothly.
As noted, it takes a while to get there. In fact, they don’t even reach Long Island before the 62% mark (all hail Kindle readers!), with much of the opening two-thirds taken up with interpersonal relationship, prep work for the expedition, or world building. It’s not dull, but for a franchise called Zpocalypto, I was expecting rather more… well, pocalypto, I guess. Or, indeed, more Z, with the first one we encounter in real-time, again, not showing up until they’re swimming through the tunnel to Long Island. To be frank, I was seriously wondering if this would qualify for inclusion here to the eighty percent (hail Kindle!) point, hence the low K-BQ.
However, it then goes from 0-60 in about two pages, and basically doesn’t let up thereafter. Jessie and her expedition “buddy” Jake find themselves cornered in a gas station, from which they first have to extricate themselves, reunite with the rest of their party, and head back to the mainland. None of which is easy. Fortunately, she had received some weapons training from her grandfather when Jessie was young, and that certainly comes in handy against the hordes of undead who have suddenly popped up. That in itself poses questions, which I imagine are answered… at some point over the thirteen subsequent volumes. Yeah. While I get the need for an author to pace themselves, Tanpepper (a fabulous pseudonym, incidentally) needs to do a better job of grabbing the audience’s attention out of the gates.
Author: Saul Tanpepper
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 14 in the Zpocalypto series.