Customer Reviews

Plague of the Dead (the Morningstar Strain)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is an excellent zombie book. The story follows survivors from all over the world from the very beginning of the zombie plague and how they deal with it.

It is well written with very strong character development. You won't want to put it down as you will always want to turn one more page to see what happens.

A great read and worth reading again and again.

This is only book one of three. I also recommending picking up the second book in the series at the same time "Thunder and Ashes (the Morningstar Strain)". As you will want to jump into the second book right after you finish the first.

No one is sure at the moment when the third book will be released as the author has recently passed away (December 2009). He was a great author and I hope it will be released one day.

So pick up the books and be prepared to end up wanting to read it from cover to cover in one sitting!

For the most part, Plague of the Dead is a great book. Recht comes up with an interesting (and plausible) way to have both fast (sprinters) and slow (shamblers) zombies. To me that alone was worth the price of admission.

The action is quite good and pacing adequate. Characters are fairly well developed and not one-dimensional stereotypical cut-outs like in so many other zombie books (the evil army officer, the criminal seeking redemption, the family man who is the sole survivor, etc). I also really liked the fact that the cast of survivors was international in make-up, which gave it a unique flavour other zombie books lack.

For me, the biggest let down was the battle of Suez. In the book, Recht clearly notes that a force of 500,000 multi-national troops is there to help enforce the quarantine of Africa, yet when the battle for all the marbles happens, only a battalion of troops and a couple of helicopter gunships is sent to prevent a horde numbering in the thousands from crossing the canal and spreading the infection. Pardon? Even an amateur military strategist could see that far more troops and gunships was necessary.

Still, I'm interested in reading the second book in the series (and the third if it was finished before Recht's untimely passing).

Poor, ham-fisted garbage. The edition I read looked like a poorly done vanity press job put out to ride the wave of zombie books, comics and movies. Badly written with boring, tedious characters who speak and behave in the most obvious stereotyped ways. No research seems to have been done about anything the book touches on. The worst kind of fan-based fiction.