Review: Grammar is too distracting
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 08 2, 2012
Right off the bat, I have to admit I could only get through about half of this story before the numerous grammatical errors finally shut down my brain. There were a few spelling errors (like "shot" being used every time the word "shoot" was intended), but the unbelievable part was I think I was something like 40% through the book before I saw the first comma. It could also have used a lot more periods, to cut down the many run-on (and on and on) sentences. Back to the "shot-shoot" controversy, errors like that do NOT get picked up by a spell-checker, so without the benefit of a GOOD editor, those errors will always slip through. For awhile, I was confused because he always spelled "shooter" or "shooting" correctly, but that's likely because a spell-checker would have caught "shoter" or "shoting", and corrected it.All that being said, I believe in giving the bad news first, so here comes the good news. The storyline was good. It was a variation on the basic "zombie's take over, regular folks have to get across town to rescue family members, stuff keeps happening to get in their way" premise, but still, I thought it was an interesting variation. There is some tension between two of the main characters, both of whom happen to be former Marines, because one is living with a woman (Aunt Lauren) the other one used to date, and maybe still has feelings for. To add further tension, the two kids involved don't like the guy who is living with their Aunt Lauren, while the other guy is their god-father. Oh, I forgot to mention the two kids also live with their aunt, because their parents are deceased. (The parents aren't zombies, at least not at the point where I had to quit reading.) It was also a clever and fun gimmick to read about these two former Marines literally mowing down hoards of zombies, using little more than a knife and their wits. They also had plenty of guns and ammo, but they seemed to revert to their hand-to-hand training under pressure, and it worked well.I could only give this two stars, due to the grammatical errors. However, if the author pulls this back out of circulation and runs it past an editorial service, it could easily merit four stars. It has potential, it just suffers from premature publication.