Review: Very good zombie fiction, but very short
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 15, 2012
I've been reading quite a few zombie apocalypse books lately, running the gamut when it comes to quality and writing styles. I've read some that are pretty bad, and I've read some that are really really good, and many that are in between.This "Arisen" series is actually quite good. Sure, it hits some of the cliches, but it is a fun read with good flow, pretty good dialog, enough jargon to feel authentic (especially in dialogs) without bogging it down so much that it loses your attention, some nice twists on the standard zombie archetypes without it feeling like the rules are being broken. Overall I'm enjoying the story, and the writing style doesn't get in the way of telling it (which is usually the problem in the books I rank as "pretty bad"). So, I'll say...This is definitely a MUST READ for fans of zombie apocalypse fiction. I'll go ahead and put it up there with things like "The Morningstar Strain" trilogy and "Day by Day Armageddon" and such.The ONLY reason I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 5 is because of the length. It is too short, and the second one is even shorter (I started reading this series yesterday, and I'm already more than halfway through the second book). I feel it would be much more satisfying if they were combined into a single volume, and that would end up being pretty close to a standard novel length. Instead, we have to buy them one at a time. For now, at $4.99 (Asia/Pacific region) a pop, that's fine. But if the series gets longer and longer, that's going to start hitting the wallet hard.In a way, you can take my complaint about the shortness as a kind of praise, too. I just want to keep reading and keep reading, and the short length means I get to the end too quickly. ;)