Saturday, January 19, 2013

Review: The New hunger

(Not the actual cover image)
Read 1/12/13 - 1/15/13
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to fans of Warm Bodies, zombie lit, and prequels that refuse to give it all up
Pgs: 128 (E-novella)
Publisher: Zola Books
Release Date: 1/28/13

It's the early days of the collapse. The streets are littered with corpses, buildings have been looted and cleaned out, and the dead are slowly taking to their feet.

Twelve year old Julie rides in the SUV with her parents as they move from city to city in search of safe zones. She misses her friends and her school, but is learning to adapt to this hard, new life. Somewhere else, Nora and her little brother Addis pick through stores and buildings in search of food and temporary shelter, always on the lookout for other survivors. They are starving and scared, and are being followed by a silent large man with a gaping hole in his gut. Meanwhile, in the woods, a tall man begins to stir, a new kind of life animating a body that was once dead. He has no memory of who he is but immediately feels a strong desire to find others.

As these characters make their way towards each other, awful and unexpected things will happen and as the dead become more aware, underestimating their power and hunger can be fatal.

The New Hunger behaves very much like a prequel - giving its readers a glimpse into each characters' back story, building the tension and expectations typical of a zombie apocalypse that pushes these separate groups together - while still screaming for even more back story and falling this short of  leaving off where Warm Bodies began.

Fans of Warm Bodies will be happy to find themselves falling back into Isaac Marion's capable hands, trusting the decisions he makes along his destroyed and demolished landscapes, eagerly anticipating his every twist and turn. Never read Warm Bodies? No worries, The New Hunger works very well as a stand-alone novella too. Zombie fiction lovers who pick this up are guaranteed to find something to sink their teeth into.

Other recommended Warm Bodies / zombie / prequel-ish online samplings can be found here: Boarded Window and here: I am a Zombie Filled with Love

Go get your zombie on!

No comments:

Post a Comment