Zom-B by Darren Shan

Zom-B by Darren Shan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 1 day

Pages - 217

Publisher - Simon & Schuster

Blurb from Goodreads

Zom-B is a radical new series about a zombie apocalypse, told in the first person by one of its victims. The series combines classic Shan action with a fiendishly twisting plot and hard-hitting and thought-provoking moral questions dealing with racism, abuse of power and more. This is challenging material, which will captivate existing Shan fans and bring in many new ones. As Darren says, "It's a big, sprawling, vicious tale...a grisly piece of escapism, and a barbed look at the world in which we live. Each book in the series is short, fast-paced and bloody. A high body-count is guaranteed!"



My Review

This is the first book in a zombie series, we open with B our main character, a teenager who is still at school when the first stirrings of a zombie outbreak starts. No one really believes it and thinks the videos & news are mock ups. We follow B through relatively mundane happenings, until over 100 pages in we finally get our first glimpse of the undead.

So, for me this was a bit more like Fear The Walking Dead rather than The Walking Dead, heavily focused on the pre and build up to the actual onslaught. B is not a likable main character, a lot of time is spent being a bully or just horrible selfish behaviour to assessing the behviour and not wanting to be like her very racist father. There are scenes of bullying, racism, violence and when the zombies finally show up, some gore. There are also some black and white illustration artwork scattered throughout the book which makes for a nice wee change I thought.

There is a lot focus on self exploration of B's attitude, family values (that of white extremist attitude of the father), pack mentality in schools and survival mode. There are quite a few books in this series, I have already bought them so will be reading them. I would advise this may not be for the die hard zombie fans as it is a slow burner and not quite as much focus on the outbreak and zombies as it is on the characters however it is still a decent read, 3/5 for me.

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