Review: Better than average, but not by much.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 22, 2013
I'm a voracious reader and prolific writer. If I happen to be working on a serious project it often means spending a great deal of time researching texts and tomes that wouldn't interest the average reader. The unedited first century writings of Josephus anyone? I didn't think so.When I finally get the time to read for leisure I have a tendency to wash out the old brain cells by reading what Nick Lowe might call, "Pure Pulp for Now People." I'm a sucker for detective noir, apocalyptic fiction, and lately I've been on a bit of a tear reading independent zombie fiction. However, like any cluster of books from the same genre, after a while the tend to run together. Since the blurb I read for "Waking the Zed" promised some new twists on the standard hackneyed zombie apocalypse I opted to give it a shot. I could definitely have done worse and have in the past.Sadly, that's about the highest compliment I can pay. Too long to be considered a short story, a bit too short to even be considered a proper novella, the story is a quick read. I tend to envy writers with the gift of brevity, since I lean toward being verbose myself. Ms. Katz is nothing if not concise. However, sometimes a writer can be too stingy. After I finished the story I found myself wanting more - but not in the, "gee I want to know what happens next" sense. Instead, I found myself thinking back to other parts of the tale and wishing certain sections had been fleshed out a bit more. For lack of a better way to express it, I felt a lot of potential detail had been simply glossed over. The author presented us with each character, told us just enough information to discern whether we were supposed to like them or hate them, and then it was on to the next plot point.Your mileage may vary but for me the better the character is developed the more involved I am in the events that surround him or her. It's a matter of investment in the lives of the people. For me, it's all the more important in the horror sub-genres because of the tendency of lesser authors to line up faceless people that are in the narrative for the sole purpose of winding up stacked like cordwood corpses to up the body count. If you've read more than the occasional zombie fiction it's easy to glean which characters will be key to the story and which are merely walking snacks based on the time Ms Katz invests in creating back-stories.I've read a lot of truly bad novels. Check my review history and you'll find more than a few. I've also enthusiastically cheered and encouraged authors of what I found to be true hidden gems amongst the indie dross.  I'll be reading more of Ms Katz and look forward to her continuance of the "Zed" story. While not quite as unique as advertised, the begins of the zombie appearance is creative and more logical than most other books of this ilk. Apparently there were some grammatical issues with earlier editions, but the copy I downloaded had few mistakes. Ironically enough, the one issue I had, despite the seeming "race to the end" writing style, was with redundancy. A brief example with no spoilers is presented here:"Somehow Pam had entirely forgotten that she had slipped her cell phone in her pocket..."(a few pages later)"Pam had no real way to gauge time as she had still forgotten about her cell phone."(a few pages after that)"Until this time she had totally forgotten about that (her phone, mentioned in just the previous sentence) she had slipped it in her pocket."Go figure.Once again I do want to stress that this tale, while close to the middle of the pack of the dozen or so I've read of late, is still a bit better than average - despite the flaws I mentioned. It's a great way to kill time while waiting for an appointment or relaxing at the beach. In a couple of weeks one of her other offerings will pop up to the top of my reading queue and I'll be better able to judge if Ms Katz just happens to have a very tight style or if it was just one of the idiosyncracies of this particular story. Regardless, this one was good enough to rouse my curiosity about what else has found its way from her mind to being offered for our Kindles and assorted e-readers - and that in itself is a fairly rare occurance.