Adam
As someone who is not a massive fan of the zombie genre, I've wound up consuming a fair few things in the genre over the years. I picked this entire book series up a while ago and I've finally sat down to read it. It took me a little while, not because it was bad, but because all books that are the first in a much larger series always have the first half of the book paced pretty slowly. So, sometimes I have trouble cranking through the first book, while the following novels go much faster for me. I mean, everyone should know, it's a necessary slog because the author wants you to care about the characters and one of the best vehicles to do that is to flat out introduce them, often in relatively mundane ways to make them seem relatable/realistic. Smith did an awesome job of this, but very few people could ever make such things feel extremely fast paced. Other than to do that time line jump around stuff where one chapter is in the thick of the action and the next is back in time to build the characters etc. I kinda prefer the slow slog than time jump if I'm being honest.
<i>Extinction Horizon</i> features two fairly main characters Reed Beckham and Kate Lovato. We are introduced to them quite separately as they go about their day jobs and Smith jumps between the two at the beginning. Naturally there are side characters in this, such as Reed's team, but early on I'm expecting these two to be a bit of a "Mary-Sue" and this is about their survival and just about everyone else is expendable (as is the usual case for Post Apocalypse scenarios).
(The following is not much of a spoiler, because it honestly all pretty much happens in the first couple of chapters.)
Beckham is an extremely highly trained covert operative in charge of a special forces unit called Ghost that is sent in when the US government needs to leave no trace that a team was sent in... for reasons. Beckham's team is kind of thrown into the action quite early on where the government has lost contact with a research facility on an island in Building 8. Beckham's mission is to extract a sample of what they were working on and get out. On the plane ride it is revealed that during the Vietnam War our government's desire to create super soldiers never really waned after World War II and we find out they tested out a new drug called VX99. However, the test subject went berserk and killed everyone around them then went into the jungle hunting. It's pretty wild stuff and a really cool concept. Fast forward to the modern era and our government is at it again, but this time messing with Ebola to create a more intense contagion, under the guise of "trying to cure Ebola". A member of Kate's team, Ellis, is with Bekham as an advisor on this mission and he will be transporting the sample back to CDC where Kate works. We are then introduced to Kate and the rest of her team.
Needless to say things go very awry at the lab and Bekham and his team are lucky to get out alive. However, by the time they make it back to relative "safety" it's already too late. The virus is out and spreading rapidly. One of the things I really like about the novel is that the zombies aren't really like the traditional style of zombies. Instead they are a true threat, which I think is a bit inspired by 28 Days Later and the concept of the Rage Virus from that franchise. The victims are often faster and stronger, so it's really terrifying trying to defeat these things. Smith also gives us a dash of Resident Evil and introduces strange body horror level mutations into the victims. Their hands transform into claws so they can rapidly climb walls like a spider and their mouths transform into these weird sucker shapes, ostensibly to bite victims and spread the virus faster I assume.
It's kind of surprising how fast the world falls, as I thought Smith would milk it a bit over a couple of novels, just to give us readers a bit of false hope that maybe the virus could be contained... but nope, the world just falls in about a week. There are pockets of resistance and at this point I'm assuming the next novels are going to sort of be about trying to coordinate with those that are left or trying to maybe rescue who survived while looking for a cure or vaccine of some kind. A vaccine would be an interesting thing to include because it would take away the threat of infection, but it doesn't stop the zombies from being an insane threat given how strong they are.
Another aspect that I really liked about this was that it's a third person story and it's military based. I feel like the majority of the zombie genre books and movies are often told from the perspective of some random person who survived or a random group of regular people who made it. Maybe that's why Smith's zombies are a real serious threat due to their speed and strength, so coupled with the horde mechanic zombies always feature fighting trained operatives can feel like a truly desperate event. Do you have enough ammo to survive a swarm? Can you reload fast enough? etc. That dynamic really makes the battles intense to read and Smith does a superb job of making those action sequences feel like a desperate fight. Whereas the usual slow zombies a la <i>Day of the Dead</i> or <i>The Walking Dead</i> would be little threat to a team like Ghost. They would just kill all of them and establish a perimeter for extraction fast enough to get a helicopter in. With Smith's zombies you don't have time for that.
The one thing Smith gives his people a chance with is that you can just shoot the zombies in the chest and kill them like a normal human. If you do enough damage to the zombie it dies. The threat of things like <i>The Walking Dead</i> is that you do need to shoot them in the head in order to stop them.
The book clearly ends with the intent to write a second installment. I'm actually going to be quite interested in reading the next book to see where things go. A lot of stuff happened in this first book and things I thought he would bleed out over the series just all happened in this first novel. I quite like his characters Bekham and Kate, even if to a certain degree they feel a little bit one dimensional at this point. But gosh, a lot has certainly happened so having super deep characters in an action packed book like this right away is not very realistic. Just run with the 80's/90's action flick feel and enjoy the ride.
As someone who is not a massive fan of the zombie genre, I've wound up consuming a fair few things in the genre over the years. I picked this entire book series up a while ago and I've finally sat down to read it. It took me a little while, not because it was bad, but because all books that are the first in a much larger series always have the first half of the book paced pretty slowly. So, sometimes I have trouble cranking through the first book, while the following novels go much faster for me. I mean, everyone should know, it's a necessary slog because the author wants you to care about the characters and one of the best vehicles to do that is to flat out introduce them, often in relatively mundane ways to make them seem relatable/realistic. Smith did an awesome job of this, but very few people could ever make such things feel extremely fast paced. Other than to do that time line jump around stuff where one chapter is in the thick of the action and the next is back in time to build the characters etc. I kinda prefer the slow slog than time jump if I'm being honest.
<i>Extinction Horizon</i> features two fairly main characters Reed Beckham and Kate Lovato. We are introduced to them quite separately as they go about their day jobs and Smith jumps between the two at the beginning. Naturally there are side characters in this, such as Reed's team, but early on I'm expecting these two to be a bit of a "Mary-Sue" and this is about their survival and just about everyone else is expendable (as is the usual case for Post Apocalypse scenarios).
(The following is not much of a spoiler, because it honestly all pretty much happens in the first couple of chapters.)
Beckham is an extremely highly trained covert operative in charge of a special forces unit called Ghost that is sent in when the US government needs to leave no trace that a team was sent in... for reasons. Beckham's team is kind of thrown into the action quite early on where the government has lost contact with a research facility on an island in Building 8. Beckham's mission is to extract a sample of what they were working on and get out. On the plane ride it is revealed that during the Vietnam War our government's desire to create super soldiers never really waned after World War II and we find out they tested out a new drug called VX99. However, the test subject went berserk and killed everyone around them then went into the jungle hunting. It's pretty wild stuff and a really cool concept. Fast forward to the modern era and our government is at it again, but this time messing with Ebola to create a more intense contagion, under the guise of "trying to cure Ebola". A member of Kate's team, Ellis, is with Bekham as an advisor on this mission and he will be transporting the sample back to CDC where Kate works. We are then introduced to Kate and the rest of her team.
Needless to say things go very awry at the lab and Bekham and his team are lucky to get out alive. However, by the time they make it back to relative "safety" it's already too late. The virus is out and spreading rapidly. One of the things I really like about the novel is that the zombies aren't really like the traditional style of zombies. Instead they are a true threat, which I think is a bit inspired by 28 Days Later and the concept of the Rage Virus from that franchise. The victims are often faster and stronger, so it's really terrifying trying to defeat these things. Smith also gives us a dash of Resident Evil and introduces strange body horror level mutations into the victims. Their hands transform into claws so they can rapidly climb walls like a spider and their mouths transform into these weird sucker shapes, ostensibly to bite victims and spread the virus faster I assume.
It's kind of surprising how fast the world falls, as I thought Smith would milk it a bit over a couple of novels, just to give us readers a bit of false hope that maybe the virus could be contained... but nope, the world just falls in about a week. There are pockets of resistance and at this point I'm assuming the next novels are going to sort of be about trying to coordinate with those that are left or trying to maybe rescue who survived while looking for a cure or vaccine of some kind. A vaccine would be an interesting thing to include because it would take away the threat of infection, but it doesn't stop the zombies from being an insane threat given how strong they are.
Another aspect that I really liked about this was that it's a third person story and it's military based. I feel like the majority of the zombie genre books and movies are often told from the perspective of some random person who survived or a random group of regular people who made it. Maybe that's why Smith's zombies are a real serious threat due to their speed and strength, so coupled with the horde mechanic zombies always feature fighting trained operatives can feel like a truly desperate event. Do you have enough ammo to survive a swarm? Can you reload fast enough? etc. That dynamic really makes the battles intense to read and Smith does a superb job of making those action sequences feel like a desperate fight. Whereas the usual slow zombies a la <i>Day of the Dead</i> or <i>The Walking Dead</i> would be little threat to a team like Ghost. They would just kill all of them and establish a perimeter for extraction fast enough to get a helicopter in. With Smith's zombies you don't have time for that.
The one thing Smith gives his people a chance with is that you can just shoot the zombies in the chest and kill them like a normal human. If you do enough damage to the zombie it dies. The threat of things like <i>The Walking Dead</i> is that you do need to shoot them in the head in order to stop them.
The book clearly ends with the intent to write a second installment. I'm actually going to be quite interested in reading the next book to see where things go. A lot of stuff happened in this first book and things I thought he would bleed out over the series just all happened in this first novel. I quite like his characters Bekham and Kate, even if to a certain degree they feel a little bit one dimensional at this point. But gosh, a lot has certainly happened so having super deep characters in an action packed book like this right away is not very realistic. Just run with the 80's/90's action flick feel and enjoy the ride.