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Up until a couple of days ago, I was reading City of Mirrors the third and final instalment of The Passage trilogy. A beautifully written apocalyptic tale. It has a scope and lyricism to it that sets it apart from most of the poc fiction out there. I'd been waiting for book three for a couple of years and it did not disappoint!
So then I was casting about for something to catch me - and ended up reading the first instalment of 'Surviving the Evacuation'. I wasn't expecting anything great - figured it would just be another zompoc tale, following the same path as most, but was intrigued because unlike most it is set in the UK, where guns are not a major feature of the landscape and I was curious what difference that would make to the survival of the main character.
It was also free on kindle, so that was a plus :P
Really good read. It's only a short book, so I read it across a couple of nights and a day. Love the main character. Love the way he isn't miraculously transformed into a badass within a few days of the zombie outbreak. It's a lot more thoughtful than a lot of zompoc books. There are no easy survival solutions (he doesn't stumble upon a weapons cache, meet up with a special forces survival expert or any of the other conveniences that tend to occur in these books).
It takes the form of his diary entries, so it has a nicely intimate style. He bgins the apocalypse stuck in his flat, with a broken leg, knowing he has at least 70 days before the cast can come off. The first half of the book has a mounting sense of isolation and claustrophobia, interspersed with what he has gleaned about the way the virus has spread and affected the world at large and Britain as a whole. he was some sort of government advisor before it all went to shit, so his insights are those of an insider and there is a growing sense of mystery around some of the decisions that were made during the early days of the outbreak.
It's well written and very human., The zombies are there, they are the main danger, but the focus is on his survival. Ordinary questions of survival. Water and food being the prime concern.
Really enjoyed the book and will definitely be reading the next!
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