Review: Implausible and unedited
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 20, 2014
I honestly can't recommend The Dead Live On. I wanted to like it - the initial description of the story involves a keen player of Resident Evil who finds herself in a real zombie apocalypse. It sounded fun, but the novel did not live up to the blurb. We start with a dull and somewhat racist account of how the virus at the heart of the plot is released. We then jump to the gamer-heroine, and know from the first page of her story that she is going to die. She recounts her history - very little reference to Resident Evil or gaming tactics, just a lot of gore and graphic nastiness. She then dies, and we jump to a new heroine. Changing the central character can work, if done well - I didn't feel that this did. Having invested some interest in the first heroine, I had to start again with a new and even more bland character. The focus jumps to other characters without particular reason, again lessening any identification with the central character.The plot itself is not overly complex or interesting. There are numerous hints of some kind of supernatural cause for the plague (totally at odds with the prologue describing how it started) combined with other extraordinary natural disasters, suggesting God's vengeance upon the world (but those apparently didn't matter because they only affected Europe and Asia, not America, and are virtually just throw-away comments). One of the characters shows evidence of being psychic, but with no visible reason or logic. The internal logic just doesn't hold together - my disbelief had to be so heavily suspended that it hanged itself. As a simple example, at one stage certain characters make a decision to carry out an extraordinarily drastic plan to deal with the zombies, which involves mass murder on a continent-wide scale. They don't even stop to think about this or to debate the morality of it, but just do it (and no, there was no desperate urgency forcing their hand). Other characters react stupidly or insanely. A scientist develops the drastic plan then goes off to look for his family rather than using it, having given the key to the plan to his six year old daughter whom he takes with him from a place of safety into zombie-infested lands. The events simply beggar belief.The writing is not anything special, either, with limited descriptions and flat dialogue. And the book desperately needs proper editing - I became greatly irritated with the number of typos, grammatical errors, missed words, spelling faults, misuse of apostrophes and bad punctuation. Odd slips I will forgive and ignore, but when there are faults every couple of screens it suggests a contempt for the readership. My advice - if this book (or its threatened sequel) lurches towards you, shoot it in the head.