A review by xterminal
Plague of the Dead by Bowie V. Ibarra, Z.A. Recht
4.0
Z. A. Recht, The Morningstar Strain: Plague of the Dead (Permuted Press, 2006)
The late Zachary Recht died in December of 2009 at the age of twenty-six, leaving behind roughly half of the final book in the Morningstar Strain trilogy. Word on the street is that it will eventually be fleshed out by another author and released by Permuted, with the blessings of Recht's family. Good news indeed, as the Morningstar Strain books are quite a surprise, if you're not familiar with Permuted stuff. A number of Permuted authors have recently gone, pardon the pun, viral; David Moody was picked up by Thomas Dunne, Kim Paffenroth has published through Baylor University Press, and just before his death, Recht was picked up by Simon and Schuster. As a result of the latter, Plague of the Dead, which had been out of print for a while, got itself a re-release and shelf space in major bookstores.
We start off with a nasty new disease coming out of the African jungles, where so many of these ugly things have started (Ebola, Marburg, supposedly HIV...). If you've seen a few fast-zombie-that-aren't-really-zombie movies (think 28 Days Later...), you've got an idea of the first stage of the disease, known as Morningstar. The trick of it is that carriers who aren't correctly dispatched also rise from the dead, seeming more like Romero-style zombies (shuffling and moaning and all that). Plague of the Dead takes us through the first months of the disease as it spreads from Africa to the rest of the planet through the eyes of a number of people: an Army general, a Red Cross worker, a virologist who's become the greatest living expert on Morningstar, and a number of others. This is an ensemble-cast book, but an ensemble-cast book in the way Dean Koontz does it; they all start out in different places, but you know they'll all wind up together eventually.
At least, you know that after the first few chapters. The introduction of Rebecca (the Red Cross volunteer) threw me for a loop for a good few pages until I figured out what Recht was doing, and then I got back on track well enough. After that one hiccup, everything went smoothly, and I ended up finishing the book in a weekend (taking time out to devote to other books I'm in the middle of as well); Recht has some fine ideas about the zombie apocalypse, and seems to have had enough sense of his own limitations to keep the scenarios he spins on a very small scale (most of the scenes gravitate towards small rooms), looking at one piece of the puzzle rather than trying to give an overall picture—a trap many purveyors of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy fall into all too often.
The book does have its shortcomings, though the majority of them (having to do with proofreading) can be laid at the feet of Pocket/Simon and Schuster, but the typo level is about standard for modern novels, so if you've gotten used to it, no problem. Also, I tend to like my series books to at least have the illusion of being standalones, and the ending of Plague of the Dead leaves no doubt in your mind that there is another book coming. None of this in any way constitutes not recommending the book, however; this is, in the vein of many recent survival-horror novels, less about horror than it is about action (Recht, a vet himself, devotes a number of pages to the military's operations against the undead—your mileage may vary, but the reason I love fantasy novels by authors like Elizabeth Moon and Steven Erikson is exactly this), but there are some passages where things get pretty creepy as well. If you like this kind of mix, then you definitely want to pick this one up. I've already got Thunder and Ashes, the second book, waiting for me on the shelf. *** ½
The late Zachary Recht died in December of 2009 at the age of twenty-six, leaving behind roughly half of the final book in the Morningstar Strain trilogy. Word on the street is that it will eventually be fleshed out by another author and released by Permuted, with the blessings of Recht's family. Good news indeed, as the Morningstar Strain books are quite a surprise, if you're not familiar with Permuted stuff. A number of Permuted authors have recently gone, pardon the pun, viral; David Moody was picked up by Thomas Dunne, Kim Paffenroth has published through Baylor University Press, and just before his death, Recht was picked up by Simon and Schuster. As a result of the latter, Plague of the Dead, which had been out of print for a while, got itself a re-release and shelf space in major bookstores.
We start off with a nasty new disease coming out of the African jungles, where so many of these ugly things have started (Ebola, Marburg, supposedly HIV...). If you've seen a few fast-zombie-that-aren't-really-zombie movies (think 28 Days Later...), you've got an idea of the first stage of the disease, known as Morningstar. The trick of it is that carriers who aren't correctly dispatched also rise from the dead, seeming more like Romero-style zombies (shuffling and moaning and all that). Plague of the Dead takes us through the first months of the disease as it spreads from Africa to the rest of the planet through the eyes of a number of people: an Army general, a Red Cross worker, a virologist who's become the greatest living expert on Morningstar, and a number of others. This is an ensemble-cast book, but an ensemble-cast book in the way Dean Koontz does it; they all start out in different places, but you know they'll all wind up together eventually.
At least, you know that after the first few chapters. The introduction of Rebecca (the Red Cross volunteer) threw me for a loop for a good few pages until I figured out what Recht was doing, and then I got back on track well enough. After that one hiccup, everything went smoothly, and I ended up finishing the book in a weekend (taking time out to devote to other books I'm in the middle of as well); Recht has some fine ideas about the zombie apocalypse, and seems to have had enough sense of his own limitations to keep the scenarios he spins on a very small scale (most of the scenes gravitate towards small rooms), looking at one piece of the puzzle rather than trying to give an overall picture—a trap many purveyors of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy fall into all too often.
The book does have its shortcomings, though the majority of them (having to do with proofreading) can be laid at the feet of Pocket/Simon and Schuster, but the typo level is about standard for modern novels, so if you've gotten used to it, no problem. Also, I tend to like my series books to at least have the illusion of being standalones, and the ending of Plague of the Dead leaves no doubt in your mind that there is another book coming. None of this in any way constitutes not recommending the book, however; this is, in the vein of many recent survival-horror novels, less about horror than it is about action (Recht, a vet himself, devotes a number of pages to the military's operations against the undead—your mileage may vary, but the reason I love fantasy novels by authors like Elizabeth Moon and Steven Erikson is exactly this), but there are some passages where things get pretty creepy as well. If you like this kind of mix, then you definitely want to pick this one up. I've already got Thunder and Ashes, the second book, waiting for me on the shelf. *** ½