Abigail does not have the usual pets a little girl would have. She has a pet zombie. He gets lonely with her at school all day so he follows her one day. He has a good time at school but he's not allowed back so a new plan has to be made. Can it be made? Will it work?

This is absolutely adorable! I loved it. The illustrations are wonderful. I could help but fall in love with the zombie. I have got to read the rest of the series.

This was a slog. Three stars is a gift. I am invested in the characters based on the previous two novels, which were excellent. In the beginning I enjoyed the militaristic strategy the protagonists, Kilroy, took to surviving the zombie apocalypse; it's what kept him and the people he found along the way alive for as long as they have been. It was enough to make sense why he survived and was able to help people along the way; creating a community of survivors.

This novel took away the connection with the characters, changed the plot, made it slightly convoluted and ramped up the military aspect to 1,000. This novel is 80 percent military jargon and operations now, as Kil and his group encounter a working branch of military and he, as an enlisted man, is pushed back into service.

While I am still very invested in the characters and would like to see where this goes, but who knows what gresh hell the next installment will bring.

To start, I have no idea what I was thinking when I decided I HAD to read this. I shall quantify this by saying, as someone who has lived her intire life dealing with the reality of slaver, racism, and mysoginy, I despise dealing with it in my fantasy world. I actively avoide books and movies that are racially charged or heavy with the sexism. Sometimes you can't avoid it, and sometime and book/movie is so effing fantastic that I can give it a pass. Dread Nation is going on the list. But make no mistake, the racism really grated on me.  Also, it was in first person perspective, which I normally loathe; this was not bad.

With that being said, this was an amazing story, and what drew it to me was zombies, combined with historical fiction, and black people in the forefront. The characters were fun and likeable, even when they were unliekable. The world building was amazing and the writing was incredible!

We follow Jane McKeene a half black/white girl who is a student at Miss Preston's School for Negro Girls (I think that's what it was called.) Basically when the dead decided to get up and walk during the battle of Gettysburg The Civil War "ended" and the war vs the Dead began. The North still "won" and blacks were given freedom, but not really. They, along with indigenous tribes were swooped and placed in combat schools where they taught them how to be on the frontlines in the battle against the dead, as well as beat their culture and "savageness" out of them so that they can better serve their white betters. Sigh, I'm letting the bitterness bleed into the review.

Anyway Jane gets thrust into crazy adventures and all around bad situations with her nemisise Kathrine Devaraux, who is also of mixed race, but a goody-goofy know-it-all, which irks Jane to no end. There are devious plots, secret "utopia" towns, crazy scientists with vaccines and terrible experiments. There is also the dead, which the characters refer to as shamblers. There's a lot of death, allies, betrayals and grudging friendships.

I've heard the narrator before and they were amazing. They captured the voices and brought the world to life.

Just read/listen to it; it was great!

by Frank Tayell

This is the second of the Surviving the Evacuation series of zombie books by Frank Tayell. I'm not generally a fan of zombie stories, but the first one, London, was so good I decided to try this one and see how far I end up going. The writing is well above average and keeps my interest so that the subject matter becomes background to a well-told story.

The characterisation of the main character, Bill, holds up well and a lot of new personalities enter the story. They are distinct and believable, as are the details of the plot, as long as you can believe in zombies. The writing is, overall, excellent.

The only thing I would complain about in this one is the ending. Like too many series, it was more like the end of a chapter than the end of the book. I prefer series where each one comes to a definite conclusion. As it happens I do have the next book so I will continue, perhaps next year. After that we'll see. As I said, zombies are not my favourite subject. I would certainly read something else by this author.

by Shane Carrow

Oh the feels! I'm not a big fan of zombie stories in general but this is one of the better written ones I've seen.

The story is set in Australia, beginning in Perth. Aaron is writing in his journal about applications to colleges, parties at the end of school where his twin brother Matt is very popular but he is not, and about a meteorite that falls near a small town on the other side of the country.

Soon reports start coming in from that town about a strange virus, first thought to be rabies, then something else... see where this is going?

All too soon Aaron and Matt discover they're on their own in a world where all services have stopped and the undead are out to attack anything that moves. Their phones are running out of charge so they can't even communicate with their father, who got stuck in another small town where he was looking after their grandmother before the road blocks went up.

I could really feel the tension as Aaron and Matt try to make decisions in an adult world where they were only just starting to take their first steps towards self-responsibility. Now they have to survive and there's no rule book, no authority to consult.

Despite a couple of predictable elements necessary for this genre, the plot progressed with a lot of unpredictable elements and what especially struck me was the realism of how people might react, both good and bad, in a survival situation. Since the journal is written by Aaron, it's a first person narrative and we see his own emotional responses to the need to adapt in a far too rapidly disintegrating civilisation.

Both Matt and Aaron develop in various ways as the struggle to survive takes them into situations they had never thought of and they have no choice but to think on their feet and react accordingly.

By the time we get to the last entry I was completely wrapped up in the boys' struggle and although I could see a couple of things coming as events led up to the action packed conclusion, it didn't detract from my full experience of everything that happened. This one is an easy 5 stars, just for bloody effective writing.