Feed, by Mira Grant

There are a lot of novels about a post apocalyptic world filled with zombies.  This is the best one I've read.

The concept is this:  many years after the appearance of zombies, the world has adapted to the dangers they present, and folks just deal with it; life goes on.   Meanwhile, mainstream journalism is recognized for being slanted and tainted by propaganda (which, by the way, it already is in our non-fiction real world, thanks to folks like Rupert Murdoch and probably his equivalents on the other side of the aisle). So bloggers have become mainstream reporters.

The novel follows the siblings Georgina and Shaun as they join a presidential campaign as fully accredited press, and the things they learn.  It isn't even really a "zombie book" so much as a great novel that happens to take place in a world with zombies.

Highly recommended, and I'm eager to read the sequel .

Feed (The Newsflesh Trilogy)

Girl Jacked, by Christopher Greyson

I made it all the way to 37% of this mystery novel before giving up.   It wasn't that it was horrible so much as it was uninteresting; both the story line and the character development.  This novel is tedious.

The concept is sound:  Jack, our hero and a policeman, looks for a missing girl - the sister of his best friend from high school.   Jack is completely unlikeable: his is borderline incompetent and drinks to excess.

Girl Jacked (A Jack Stratton Mystery)

Wolfkind, by Stephen Melling

This should have been a good novel:  an assassin is at large, and our hero will infiltrate a crime syndicate to find and eliminate the bad guy.   I made it 10% of the way through before stopping; this book is unreadable.

Why is that?  The writing is just too difficult to get through.   Here are some samples:

"Familiar resentment of her father seeped into her thinking and reawakened feelings she had tried so hard to repress."

"Sinking into his seat, Joshua gazed into the depths of his beer glass.  Tiny bubbles floated through the golden liquid to the surface, bobbed there a few seconds, then popped.  Many of his inhibitions seemed to pop along with them, become gas and air.  Tormented by the desire to tell his secret, Joshua gazed fixedly at the old man."

"He tossed the scrapbook aside and lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. A spider's web of cracks radiated from the light fitting. For the first time in his life the ceiling above him was not his own. This unsettled him in a way he found hard to define. Intensified his feeling of alienation. He rolled onto his side and stared at the wall, thinking about the handgun and poisoned load at the bottom of his bag. Before long, his eyelids grew heavy and he fell asleep."

And so did I.

Wolfkind

The Storm Protocol, by Iain Cosgrove

This is a poorly written novel.   My chief complaint is that the book is set primarily in the USA.   But the author is clearly, obviously not American.   As a result, it is full of dialogue, spelling and jargon that one would never see in the USA.  Which, when put in the mouths of American characters, simply doesn't work.

I made it 37% of the way through this book (according to my Kindle ) before declaring it to be unreadable.

The Storm Protocol

Slow Burn Infected, by Bobby Adair

After finishing the first of Mr. Adair's series, I decided to go for more.  I was on vacation, and it could have been the margaritas making the decision for me.  But here I am.

This novel continues the story of Zed, the "slow burn" zombie who hasn't (yet) lost his human behavior.   Zed and his associates continue to stumble around the Austin, Texas area, dealing with a variety of unpleasant problems.

At the end of this volume I was fatigued with the whole thing.   Zed isn't a particularly likable hero, and it started getting boring.  So I'm not going to bother with volume three ; dedicated zombie genre fans may have more energy than me.

Slow Burn: Infected, Book 2

Slow Burn Zero Day, by Bobby Adair

Yet another zombie book.   Our hero is Zed who learns about the zombie outbreak when he catches his step-father killing his mother.   Zed dispatches the step-father, but is himself infected.  Yet Zed is one of a small number of "slow burn" zombies, who retain human characteristics in spite of the infection.

The writing isn't great: Zed is a weirdly developed character and none of the character development is particularly well done.  And yet, I found myself caught up in this enough to download the second volume.  Go figure.

Slow Burn: Zero Day, Book 1

Seal Team 13, by Evan Currie

The concept here is that mysterious supernatural forces exist, and over time have increased their malevolent presence.   A small set of US military special forces types have survived encounters and are pulled together to deal with X-Files -like events.

Many action novels make the same mistake as Mr. Currie did in this book:  they feel compelled to make their main character, the action hero superstar, behave like an arrogant jerk.   That is quite off-putting to me.

SEAL Team 13 (SEAL Team 13 series)

The Grendel Affair, by Lisa Shearin

What an amusing, weird novel.  Reminds me of Ghost Busters, but with more attitude.   Our hero is Mac, a former tabloid journalist who now works for SPI: Supernatural Protection & Investigations. This is because Mac is a seer; she can see monsters that others can't.  SPI exists to keep the monsters under control so that normal folks aren't affected by them, and most of their staff (unlike Mac) are themselves some sort of para-normal type.

This is light hearted fun, big on action and somewhat silly.  Well, maybe quite silly.  But fun.

The Grendel Affair: A SPI Files Novel

Vatican Waltz, by Roland Merullo

This is a strange book, awkward to read.  The entire novel is written in the first person, as a narrative by the hero, Cynthia Piantedosi.   Cynthia is a first generation American of Italian descent, with an extreme devotion to the Catholic Church.

Cynthia perceives a spiritual calling, perhaps a message from her God, and she pursues this by traveling to Rome to chat with a couple of Cardinals of the Church.   Unknown elements seek to harm her.

At the end, there is an unexpected (and completely unsatisfying) twist.   It feels as thought there's a sequel coming; I won't read it.


Vatican Waltz

Barkeep, by William Lashner

The hero of this novel is Justin Chase, a law school graduate who tends bar because the horror of finding his mother murdered took him over an edge from which he never returned.   Unable to engage with others, Justin pretends that his Zen practice is stabilizing (oddly, it is built around his reading of the Book of the Dead).   Justin's father was convicted of the murder.   Now, someone brings information to Justin which implies that his father was not the murderer, and Justin follows a trail of interaction that leads to the unfulfilling denouement.   Characters are poorly developed and shallow in description.

The Barkeep