Apocalypse End : Reign of the Dead

Rating:
Summary: A small one
Review: This book is awfully trash, the first is readble but this one stinks, the main caracter sucks, he's not a man but a type of Rambo, or better an antizombie conan and rest...the rest are simply the rest...the end is horrible, i will pray to god for this trash never seen the light on film.

Rating:
Summary: Decent sequel to a good zombie-horror
Review: Apocalypse End: Reign of the Dead picks up about a year after where Reign of the Dead left off. Knowing now that the entire world has been completely overrun with the walking dead, the survivors have banded together in secure pockets elsewhere in the world. The main group of heroes remains in the military research lab, but a transmission and signs of life from an island off the North Carolina coastline convinces Jim Workman and his friends to search for more survivors. What they don't know is that there are now other vile beasts to worry about other than zombies; a huge para-military group in the Southern United States, comprised of southern state militias and violent hate groups who unfortunately managed to survive the initial wave of terror. Now, the survivors must not only deal with their flesh-eating enemies, but also cunning humans armed to the teeth, with aspirations for taking over what remains of the world.

This book is not quite as good as the first. While it maintains the sense of urgency, horror and terror that the first book had, this sequel seems a bit rushed. The zombies almost seem to take a back seat to the hate-mongering militia group. There are also much more noticeable grammatical errors in this intallment. Where the first book had a few here and there that you would have to struggle to notice, this book is almost overrun with errors.

Despite those gripes, I did enjoy this book very much. The life or death situations and suspense kept me reading all the way through. I wasn't as determined to plow through this book as I was the first one, but I still enjoyed it thoroughly. The Reign of the Dead series is almost frighteningly realistic in its delivery, would a situation like this, however unlikely, ever occur. When I finished this book, I was generally happy to have read it. It is definitely not one of the best books i've read, but it was a great deviation from the norm. I would love to read another book like this.


Rating:
Summary: If you love the zombie genre, this book is for you!
Review: Being from Western Pennsylvania, I always assumed we had the corner on the market for the best zombie stories. With his "Reign of the Dead" series, Len Barnhart has proven that there are great living dead stories to be told about Virginia, Maryland and the Shenandoah Valley.

Barnhart has a writing style that lends itself extremely well to an action-packed story like this one. Words are not squandered on flowery descriptions (or, in this case, horrific ones), except where it is warranted. He simply gets right to the point. You will thank him for it, because there's a lot of plot to unfold.

The story traces the attempts of our protagonist, Jim Workman, and a few others trying to contact and eventually travel to an island off the coast of Virginia. But there are obstacles, in the form of a racist militia, hordes of walking dead and ... nasty! ... hungry rats! The plot travels like a speeding locomotive, and there's never a dull moment.

Character development takes a back seat to action -- in fact, you might say that character development is just stowed in the trunk. Each character can be summed up in one or two adjectives: cautious, caring, cowardly, reckless, angry, insane. This is all that is necessary for this kind of story. If I wanted character development, I would read "Wuthering Heights" or something...

There are a couple of knocks on this book (and these are shared by the first book as well).

The editing was fairly atrocious. I know, some people will want to decapitate me for complaining about something like this, but I was shocked at the number of errors. I almost began to count them, but I didn't want to ruin my enjoyment of the story.

* ...And I fully expect that someone will post a review here, lambasting my grammar and spelling... *

The story does draw upon the many plot-lines previously seen in other books and movies from the genre. Sometimes, phrases were taken directly from movies like "Dawn of the Dead." I saw this more as an homage to what came before -- and it usually drew a wry smile from me.

But let's put these minor criticisms back in perspective: despite these flaws, I loved this book (and the first in the series, "Reign of the Dead"). By no means am I a fast reader, but I finished each of the books in one evening. I could barely contain myself in the six days between my reading the first and my receiving the second in the mail.

For those of us who love the genre, let us hope this story finds its way onto film.

Rating:
Summary: Same Bad Writing as the first book
Review: I got this and its prequel together and really wished I hadn't. No improvements were made in the editing and the plot was as haphazard as the first book.

Rating:
Summary: Variations on a theme wasted by apathy
Review: Ignoring some of the crass racial undertones, I was hoping to be impressed, and for Barnhart to redeem himself here. However the book doesn't demonstrate any improvements on the original story and there isn't anything really substantive in the first book other than the promise of an emerging author finding his voice. This effort just felt like something quickly put together, stuffed in an envelope and then sent to the publisher. The series' potential is wasted by laziness and apathy. I think the book holds up well enough as a sequel to the first, but sadly that isn't granting it a whole lot. Camp fiction fans might like this in the same way they to watch bad horror movies on cable. Serious horror fans, who are attuned to the intricacies of Anne Rice et al will be as receptive to this as one is to pofessional wrestling or tractor pulls.

Rating:
Summary: Case study on which writing mistakes not to make
Review: This book is useful for creative writing students in determining what sort of pitfalls in plot development, characterization, and mechanics to avoid. I'm judging this based on subjective elements that make a novel worthwhile to me; my viewpoint apparently doesn't apply to everyone, given some good reviews I've read about this work. I'd consider any work that gets published as a "draft" an ambiguous blessing to its author: on the one hand, it's a milestone, on the other, the remaining bodies of a writer's work will be judged on the first impression. Genre books will always find an audience, and this book (and its companion novels) fall solidly within that category. This story is engaging and works well but needs serious revisions to the aforementioned elements to be considered "good".