*sighs*

I wanted to love this book.  The characters were great and well-developed- you could identify and if not identify, you could at least root for them.  You will become interested in what becomes of them.  BUT... and this is a great big BUT... there is a lot lacking...

First of all, there were a couple chapters with named characters that came out of nowhere... and you quickly learned they were going nowhere.  Their whole purpose was to die, without adding a damn thing to the story.  Look Mr. Author, we know what we are reading... by the blurb, by the picture on the cover, by the descriptions of the zombies and the sheer multitude of zombies... we get the fact that MANY people died and became zombies.  These chapters are little more than filler to boost your word count.  A decent editor would have told you to cut them and a good author would have heeded their advice.

Second... I'll take issue with the blurb of this book... Father Xavier did not forsake his vows at the beginning of this novel.  I would suggest a little more research if you are going keep Father Xavier around.  Of course, by the last sentence in this book, you have him most likely taking a shotgun blast to his chest (or head)...  all because he was shivering after swimming in water so cold that he had just a few moments earlier considered using to commit suicide... 

That leads me to my third and final point... great story and I would be willing to overlook the faux pas of including many pages that had no bearing on the story, and the lack of knowledge about the Church as it relates to one of the main protagonists, except for the fact that the story just stops.  On the 290th page, the story stops, no conclusions- not even to a few sub-plot arcs... the only conclusions is death for characters. This is a zombie novel, I get it, and that would be fine for some of them, but I feel short-changed.  This is a perfect example of an author more interested in selling books and the almighty dollar than telling a story.  Give your readers a couple hundred pages, hook them and then demand more money for more story... yeah... no thanks.

I am hooked enough to continue... but with a catch.  I will 'buy' the sequels, but I will read them quickly and then return them.  In the past, I have angrily railed against Amazon for allowing such shenanigans, but I will not do so again.  I will take full advantage.