Review: A Little Raw, but the Talent is There
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 18, 2013
First of all, I'm going to warn you that Spoilers abound in my review.  I've tried to think of a way to effectively review this one without spoilers, but I realized that would negate much of what I had to say.So, without much further ado...*-*-*-*SPOILER ALERT*-*-*-*The first thing that is evident when you start reading this collection, is that Jason Martinez loves the genre.  You can tell that he had a lot of fun writing these little stories and you can't help but enjoy the ride along with him.Now, this is a small collection - not an anthology, regardless of the title.  The stories in the collection are all related to the author's Zombie mythology and origin and I enjoyed recognizing some of the little connections as I read.To be honest, the collection is not yet publication ready.  It needs the sharpened virtual pencil of an editor.  There are odd words that show up in the middle of sentences here and there, some disconnects in character and storyline, and awkward grammatical quirks that tear you out of the stories from time to time.Rather than complete stories, each story reads as a small vignette within this Zombie apocalypse.  The denouements of the stories lacked noticeable punch and the stories lack solid plots within themselves.  Many of them were:  See zombies.  Run from zombies.  Die.  Yet somehow, the stories (or vignettes) work as part of the collection.While I appreciated the fact that Martinez created an origin story for his Zombie Apocalypse, the Martians left me somewhat nonplussed.  I felt a bit like I had been thrown in to a 1950's pulp horror story.  I think, if you are going to actually write about Martians in this day and age, you better bring in some hard science to explain the fact that a) there are in fact Martians  b) why we haven't figured that out before  c) try not to make it feel like the Twilight Zone episode 'The Monsters are Due on Maple Street'.  And if you're actually doing a Twilight Zone tribute, you need to make that pretty clear.As I stated before, the book is NOT publication ready.  Problems are visible as early as page 2 and come up with some frequency throughout.  I struggled between rating this a 2 and a 3, finally settling on a (probably generous) 3 stars simply because I did enjoy the storytelling and think that there's some raw talent here that just needs time, seasoning, and a little direction.