Review: Thrilling and Thought-Provoking
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 8, 2013
Joshua Guess has not completely abandoned the Living With the Dead real-time blog of the zombie apocalypse, but Ever After marks the seventh and final planned compilation. The blog will continue with less frequency as he turns his focus to deeper stories in novel form. This makes me very happy, as his first, Victim Zero, was fantastic. In Ever After, the people of The Compound -> New Haven -> Haven enter the fourth year of this new world, and events bring them from focus on survival to focus on living and building for the future. War and alliances, reevaluation of priorities and plans, and questions of what it takes to not only survive in this world, but to thrive make the reader wonder how we would react, what we would want, and make us part of the story. The author brings this phase of the blog to a close with some hints and revelations about the origin and nature of this plague, and the possible long-term affects on both the living and the dead. Ever After is entertaining, smart, exciting, poignant, and thought-provoking. As all the best zombie tales are, it's more about the individual characters and society as a whole, and the struggles humanity faces and how to overcome them.