Review: Decent PA romp, if you ignore all the logical inconsistencies
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 16, 2014
Contamination 5 ties up some loose ends with the Noah character, although it leaves a F-150 load of loose ends in its backstory.In this PA story, zombies come to America...or a part of America...or, wait, all parts or just some parts? Where's the rest of the US military again? ... as a result of a plot by the military...or a part of the military...or, wait, some rogue parts of the military? ... to kill off the population by contaminating food and water...or part of the food and water...or, wait, there's a bit of story in a slaughterhouse but how does this contaminate every speck of packaged grocery food in a multi-state area again?Oh well, if you get this far into the series you've written off the implausible setup and you can simply enjoy the nice writing about the various situations our heroes get into. Most of the humans vs. zombies action is standard but it's imaginative enough and creates enough tension that you can slip into Piperbrook's four-corners-USA world and get satisfaction.But, still. It would have been so easy to have set the premise up in a way that wasn't so...annoying. Case in point: Noah constantly searches the radio bands for clues about rescue, with nothing but static coming up. But wait - this is a REGIONAL outbreak. It's made clear in the book that other parts of America aren't affected. And most of us are aware of this radio band called AM radio, and its wonderful ability to receive quite distant signals, especially at night. There's absolutely no explanation as to why Noah doesn't scan the dial past sundown and instantly receive news from KGO in San Francisco, or KIRO in Seattle, or even KEX in Noah's home town of Portland, Oregon. Noah definitely exhibits moronic behavior from time to time, but even he's not that stupid.So, points off for a thoroughly unbelievable set of premises, but kudos for telling a good tale afterwards. It looks like Piperbrook is done with this series, and hopefully he'll spend more time on setup and world-building in the next series.