Review: Everything I love about zombie books
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 27, 2012
Zombie Night in Canada is one of those zombie reads that captures everything I love about this genre. The main characters are normal people thrown into a terrifying, overwhelming situation and proceed to make the best of a bad lot, all the while dodging, ducking and diving around the increasing zombie threat.Familiar pop-culture references (for example zombie movies, blogs and Twitter) make the story feel more realistic - after all, if rumours of a zombie virus surfaced, chances are you are going to read about it on Twitter before you see the nightly news! There is a focus on military tactics, and the available firearms and artillery is examined closely, but despite this being something I don't enjoy in zombie books, it was pretty unobtrusive on my reading experience.Personally I found there were three things that I love in zombie books that were done exceedingly well:- Although the book is set in Canada, this is not the sole focus - the fates of other countries worldwide are also expanded upon (I loved the idea of how the Netherlands isolated themselves from the threat). This gives a real feeling of 'global apocalypse' rather than the localisation of the vast majority of zombie books.- There are short 'flashes' of what happens to people in different situations - police, criminals, average people - that are incredibly believable and deeply shocking.- The unique ideas explored in the last 10% of the book - although I have read about this in other zombie books, this is by far the best implementation of the idea I have ever read.The one and only complaint that I have is that some of the characters were a little flat - although they are distinguishable from each other, they lack a unique quality that made me really care about them, but they were certainly realistic and the dialogue was never stilted or fake.For a self-published book, Zombie Night in Canada is extremely well written and edited - every part of the story is riveting and necessary.