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I can highly recommend Zombie Rules as a good entry to the genre. Iavoided it fora while because it sounded like it was going to do a lot of the stuff that pisses me off in a lot of zompoc fiction - in particular the hero's convenient hook-up with a kickass survivalist, but it was actually brilliant and a really great story. The lead character and main narrator (we get occasional changes of pov, but it mainly follows him) is just 16 when the whole thing starts and he's having a pretty shitty time of things - he's been dumped by his sweetheart, had the shit kicked out of him by some older lads, and his only family, his gran dies of a heart attack. He goes to stay with his boss at the farm where he works part-time - a cranky, asocial, alcoholic vietnam vet who is into ham radio and survivalist stuff.
It's well written and we see the boy grow up. he's a borderline genius with a photographic memory and, frankly, he does pretty well in the apocalypse. Much of the story is about his attempts to recreate a community, the relationships he builds, and his learning how to survive. It's clearly been thoroughly researched.
There are a bunch of interesting and colourful characters, and the attempts to restart a community are beset with problems, most of which are from other humans, rather than zombies - but - the zombies are changing and become more dangerous as time goes on.
It's not often I get drawn so deep into these stories that I feel choked up when a character dies, or when something terrible happens to the group but this one got right under my skin.
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