I write this review as a member of Rosie’s Book Review Team (authors, if you are looking for reviews, check here), and I freely chose to review an ARC copy of this novella.

I recently read another one of Leonard’s stories from the Dead Boxes Archive, Call Drops (you can find my review here), thoroughly enjoyed it, and could not resist reading another one in the collection.

Much of what I said about the previous story applies to this one. Yes, if you love the Friday the 13^th series, The Conjuring, The Twilight Zone, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, you’re likely to enjoy this. But, this is horror, and this story, more than the previous one, goes into fairly gore detail.

I won’t spend too long rehashing the plot of the story, because if you’ve read the author’s description you already know what is about. Anthony is a man who’s lost everything (well, not quite everything, as it turns out), and decides to try his hand at writing. Well, we’ve all been there (not perhaps having lost everything, but thinking about becoming a writer). That he decides to go old school and use pen and paper is more surprising, but his father dealt in antiques and he has an interesting heirloom to put to good use. Or bad. Of course, things take a turn for the weird soon enough.

The story is told in the third person, mostly from Anthony’s point of view, although, interspersed in the novella are some chapters that follow the investigation into a very strange streak of crimes. In fact, the book starts with one of the most bizarre crime scenes I’ve come across (and yes, I read a lot of thrillers, so that’s saying something). A word of warning: if you are of a sensitive nature, especially when it comes to libraries and librarians, you should look away. But don’t worry. I won’t describe it. Those chapters of the story, told from the point of view of Detective Sergeant Shadwell, Adi, read like a standard thriller, with the case-worn detective, the less than politically-correct policeman, the uninterested boss, and will probably feel familiar to those who read in that genre. Adi is a likeable character and shows a good deal of patience and resilience, but we don’t get to know him too well. This is a novella, after all, and most of it is taken up by Anthony’s events. You’ll probably suspect that the two seemingly separate parts of the story are interconnected in some way or other, even though the first chapter is set up “After the Handfield Tragedy” (yes, foreshadowing or what?) , and then we go back several months to get to the main action of the book. After that opening, we take up the story of Anthony, which starts innocuously enough, like many other stories you might have read about people who’ve lost everything and quickly fall into a hole, unable to find a way of slowing their downward spiral. But there is the pen, and strange things start happening quickly.

Although the story and the cards he has been dealt might make Anthony sound sympathetic, and he experiences things that would have made anybody feel unhinged, this feeling, at least for me, did not last long. Yes, he protested and claimed to be shocked for what he might have unwittingly caused, but it soon became evident that he showed no true empathy for anybody he met, and he was more preoccupied for himself and his own safety than for that of others. He seems to always think in clichés, platitudes, popular and old sayings, and proverbs, as if he did not have a single original thought in his head, and when we hear from his father, it seems that this is a family trait. As was the case in the previous story, it seems that the objects belonging to the Dead Boxes choose their owners well, indeed, and seem able to dig deep into the characters’ psyche and uncover less than flattering characteristics.

I enjoyed the story, although as was the case with the previous one, I wouldn’t recommend it to people who don’t enjoy horror or graphic violence. It is not a story likely to make you jump, but it builds up pace, and the events get more horrific as you read on (well, after the shocking start). The interim chapters from the point of view of the investigator (also written in the third person) give the reader a bit of a break, a touch of normalcy, although due to the nature of the crimes, this is relative.

I felt this novella is more likely to satisfy readers who like a sense of closure and explanation than Call Drops. We get more information about the item itself, and there are hints at the full mythos behind the Dead Boxes, which grabbed my attention.  And the ending… Well, readers have known from the beginning that something big was coming, but not necessarily what. Yes, it worked for me.

Because this is a short novella, I don’t want to share too many quotes from it because it would make it difficult not to give away too many spoilers, but I thought I’d close with this short one, which for me encapsulates a warning we should all pay attention to:

There was always a cost. That was how everything worked. Supernatural or humdrum day to day. It was all the same. You could get some goodies so long as you were willing to pay.

Leonard delivers again. I look forward to more stories from the Dead Boxes Archive.

Though it starts promisingly enough, Z. A. Recht's Plague of the Dead quickly descends into standard zombie apocalyptic territory as the U.S. makes every effort to curtail the spread of a virus on the African continent that turns people into slobbering rage-filled monsters, and then once the hosts are dead, returns them to life as shambling zombies, with forms programmed to do nothing more than spread the virus. This best of both worlds approach (think George Romero and 28 Days Later) is about the most novel addition Recht makes to the proliferation of zombie literature in the universe at the moment. Everything is else is standard, if inoffensive; predictable, though readable.

Characters are by the numbers, with the narrative boiling down to two separate groups who, by the end of the novel, are aiming to meet one another somewhere in the middle of the fairly large land mass known as North America. This implies one aspect of Plague of the Dead which was less than stellar: It is far from its own self-contained novel. In essence, it reads like Part 1 of a massive zombie tome, and offers nothing approximating a conclusion, instead baiting the reader to continue with the second book in the series ...

Of course, this was Recht's first book and to be fair, as far as first books go, I've read far, far worse. It would have been interesting to chart Recht's progress as an author, but sadly he only wrote one other book - the sequel to this one - before dying at a tragically young age.

Honestly, I'm not sure if I'll bother seeking out the sequel at this stage. I'll have to see if curiosity eventually overwhelms me.

2.5 Non-Sprinting Shamblers for Plague of the Dead.

As far as zombie apocalypse books goes, this isn't bad -- but I don't know if I'd say it's "good" either.

There's a lot of unnecessary scenes that don't really add anything to the story. A couple of the characters are interesting, but some are flat-out annoying.

The good thus far:
-- Action is described well, without becoming bogged down by military jargon or technicality.

-- Two or Three interesting characters thus far

-- E-Mail presentation ( in the beginning ) to describe the outbreak was interesting, even if only because I don't see it very often.

The Bad:

-- Typical zombie apocalypse. There's only SO much that can be done in one genre, especially THIS genre, but still.

-- Pacing. At times there's good action, or good characterization, everything is flowing well, then BLAM! Massive detour to pointless scenes.

-- Villains, aside from zombies, aren't believable. At all. They're just "Generic Bad Guy #1389711."


Current UNFINISHED rating: 2.5 / 5. So we'll see if the book picks up any.

A few spoilers here and there, but you'll still have to read the books to actually get the story.

First of all, I have a ton of respect for author Zachary Recht whom I consider a versatile person. I enjoyed all three of his books, even though the last one was finished by Thom Brannan due to the death of Recht in 2009. 

The Morningstar Saga follows the zombie apocalypse from a military point of view. The first book, Plague of the Dead - written also with the help of Bowie V. Ibarra, really focuses on how every effort of containing the virus fails and how this pandemic goes global. So basically a bunch of people get infected with this virus and they turn into what the characters will call sprinters, these people are still alive, if death occurs they get up and turn into the living dead or shamblers.

We meet Lt. Colonel Anna Demilio of the USAMRIID, who knows the most about the Morningstar Strain and warns the government of the danger that this virus represents. Of course, her warnings are ignored and the virus - stuck in Africa at first - spreads across the entire world. The public is not sufficiently informed either, so when Morningstar hits land the common people are clueless and unprepared.

Colonel Anna Demilio gets into a lot of trouble telling the truth about the virus to an anchorwoman, they both get locked up inside an NSA facility where they will meet an NSA agent who'll help them escape. These three will constitute one of the two groups who plan on meeting each other in the middle.

We get a lot of military stuff and fights but it doesn't get to be too much. After finishing Plague of the dead I felt like I had not connected with any of the characters, I even had a hard time remembering all their names. I didn't actually mind that because for the first time I felt I needed to know more about the story and less about the characters. 

The second book of this saga, Thunder and Ashes follows Francis Sherman and Anna Demilio as they are looking to find a way to Omaha - where there is a research institute.

Who is Francis Sherman? Well he is a General, who also fought in Africa and who now leads a band of soldiers, some survivors and a doctor in the hope that they'll make it out alive. He is friends with Anna Demilio from USAMRIID, whom he communicates with during his stay in Africa. These are the two groups who plan on meeting each other. 

Of course, the remaining survivors of this plague have started to form groups, so we meet bandits too. Some choose to wreak havoc, some are just trying to survive. General Sherman and his crew end up assisting a town of survivors they come across for quite a while in the book. 

There is a plot twist, there is an immune soldier - we really have it all. I did not particularly liked the second book so much, it was predictable here and there but overall it was O.K.. A good, fast read.

The saga ends with Survivors, the third book in this series where we're introduced to a corrupt government which rose from the ashes of what was once the United States of America. Their goal is to find and control the cure.

Some of the protagonists continue on trying to develop a cure for the virus, others struggle to stay alive. They are still looking to meet up. The survivors continue to fight for their future in a world where the Infected still reign. 

I liked this one a lot, but I didn't quite fall in love with it. The characters were still shallow and the story reminded me a bit of The Walking Dead.

The Morningstar saga doesn't bring anything new to the table, it's still zombies, pandemic going global, panic, terror. So I guess what I'm trying to say is - if you're into zombies you'll definitely like this saga, but if you want a good infection novel, Morningstar is not going to do it for you. 

Recommended with some reservations.

I've said before that Jonathan Maberry is responsible for my zombie obsession, but what I don't think I have spoken about before is that Z.A. Recht's The Morningstar Strain series cemented my love for the undead. As soon as I had finished Maberry's Patient Zero, I went on a hunt for another zombie book, and the first one that I picked up was Plague of the Dead, way back in 2009. In preparation of reading the final book in the series, I decided to go back and read the first two books again, even though re-reading makes me nervous as hell.

Published before every author and his dog had a stab at writing a zombie book, Plague of the Dead captures every single thing about zombie books that I love - it starts with a bang and doesn't let up all the way through.

The plot itself is fairly straightforward, but what I love about this series is the amount of time put into building a plausible cause for the virus - and the fact there are two types of zombies - the carriers who transmit the virus without mercy and the true zombies - those that have died from the virus and re-animated, making for double danger and some pretty gruesome scenes.

There is a huge amount of focus on the collapse of the world - rather than just everything falling apart within a matter of days, the path of the virus is more closely tracked and explained, and although it is a gradual fall, the pace escalates along with the impact.

There are a bunch of varied characters, mostly focused around the military, but some civilians and medicos thrown in for good measure, and in Plague of the Dead, a lot of focus is put on the key characters and all of them are individual and realistic. One thing that I particularly enjoyed is that characters make mistakes that had me almost yelling at the book - all too often in apocalyptic stories the characters are either faultless or just plain stupid, whereas in Plague of the Dead the mistakes they make are driven by emotions which makes them very realistic.

I'm very glad I went back and read Plague of the Dead again - I was worried that time had put this book on a pedestal, but it was just as scary, intense and captivating as I remembered it to be - a book that should be a zombie classic.

Read more of my reviews atThe Aussie Zombie