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vikingwolf's review
2.0
I found it hard to believe that the main character was a cop because of all the dumb decisions he seems to take through the book. He breaks a working phone purely because he gets cut off from his wife, meaning nobody can use it. Smart move. He decides to go off and investigate every noise he hears. His driving is shocking for a cop as he destroys half the cars in the city. For someone who is so determined to get home to his family, he seems very easily distracted by a pile of things that are nothing to do with him or too dangerous for anyone to even think about dealing with. But good old Eddie decides to try and be supercop to all the needy!
Marcus the psycho cop is a complete nutter yet Eddie still sticks with him and does whatever Marcus wants. On every single page I wanted him to die. He is beyond obnoxious, his conversations with Eddie are dumb and pointless and he is so reckless he seems determined to get them both killed.
The women in this book are really awful. The attention seeking female reporter who thinks that trying to be sexy will get her what she wants in the apocalypse. I HATED the bitch and couldn't understand yet again why Eddie was wasting his time talking to her when he had a family to find. His wife was obviously incapable of doing anything except cry and fall apart and seek advice from a man before blowing her nose, and that was before the zombies. She was much worse later on, wailing her head off to alert every zombie in the city because Eddie got mad at her. Jeez.
The whole plan for driving downtown, where the zombies are at their thickest and where most criminals are likely to be roaming, just to get another car was one of the dumbest things I've read. They pass a ton of abandoned cars, they even move some out of their way!!! But they keep going into town to get this car??? Crazy crazy plot.
The good points in the book are plenty of zombies, gore and a fast pace. But it does not save the book from dumb characters.
No more from this author thanks!
Marcus the psycho cop is a complete nutter yet Eddie still sticks with him and does whatever Marcus wants. On every single page I wanted him to die. He is beyond obnoxious, his conversations with Eddie are dumb and pointless and he is so reckless he seems determined to get them both killed.
The women in this book are really awful. The attention seeking female reporter who thinks that trying to be sexy will get her what she wants in the apocalypse. I HATED the bitch and couldn't understand yet again why Eddie was wasting his time talking to her when he had a family to find. His wife was obviously incapable of doing anything except cry and fall apart and seek advice from a man before blowing her nose, and that was before the zombies. She was much worse later on, wailing her head off to alert every zombie in the city because Eddie got mad at her. Jeez.
The whole plan for driving downtown, where the zombies are at their thickest and where most criminals are likely to be roaming, just to get another car was one of the dumbest things I've read. They pass a ton of abandoned cars, they even move some out of their way!!! But they keep going into town to get this car??? Crazy crazy plot.
The good points in the book are plenty of zombies, gore and a fast pace. But it does not save the book from dumb characters.
No more from this author thanks!
notyourdad's review
1.0
I thought a long time over whether I was going to bother to review this book or not, but here we are.
I'll start this review off by saying that writing a good zombie book is hard to do. I'm an avid zombie fanatic, so I was willing to give this book some grace. However. I really struggled to get into this book. It was written in the first person POV, so you don't get a lot of information about the zombie outbreak itself. Nothing about how it started, or where it started. That's fine. I can forgive that. Like I said, zombie books are hard to write, especially from the first person POV. I just found the vagueness to be really distracting because instead of following whatever Eddie was doing at the time, I was thinking about the million questions I had about the zombies.
The next gripe I have with this book is the lack of character development. I mean, I spent 288 pages with Eddie and I feel like he didn't change at all. He's a bored cop with a shrill wife and baby at home at the beginning of the book and the only thing that changes is that he starts fighting zombies. Yawn. I also didn't care for how the only 3 female characters in the entire book were represented as vapid, useless "females." This definitely did not pass the Bechdel Test.
The last problem I have with this book, and honestly the biggest reason this got only 1 star was the fact that Eddie is just a bad cop. He on multiple occasions references ways in which he would abuse his powers as a cop before the zombies showed up. At one point he is talking to a survivor who doesn't care for the police and Eddie alludes to putting people like him in jail for a night for looking at him wrong. I mean, come on. That is just blatant abuse of police power. And that wasn't even the only time it happens. I just can't condone that kind of behavior, especially in a fictional character that I'm supposed to be rooting for.
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. It was boring and the entire time I was reading it I was counting the pages until the end.
I'll start this review off by saying that writing a good zombie book is hard to do. I'm an avid zombie fanatic, so I was willing to give this book some grace. However. I really struggled to get into this book. It was written in the first person POV, so you don't get a lot of information about the zombie outbreak itself. Nothing about how it started, or where it started. That's fine. I can forgive that. Like I said, zombie books are hard to write, especially from the first person POV. I just found the vagueness to be really distracting because instead of following whatever Eddie was doing at the time, I was thinking about the million questions I had about the zombies.
The next gripe I have with this book is the lack of character development. I mean, I spent 288 pages with Eddie and I feel like he didn't change at all. He's a bored cop with a shrill wife and baby at home at the beginning of the book and the only thing that changes is that he starts fighting zombies. Yawn. I also didn't care for how the only 3 female characters in the entire book were represented as vapid, useless "females." This definitely did not pass the Bechdel Test.
The last problem I have with this book, and honestly the biggest reason this got only 1 star was the fact that Eddie is just a bad cop. He on multiple occasions references ways in which he would abuse his powers as a cop before the zombies showed up. At one point he is talking to a survivor who doesn't care for the police and Eddie alludes to putting people like him in jail for a night for looking at him wrong. I mean, come on. That is just blatant abuse of police power. And that wasn't even the only time it happens. I just can't condone that kind of behavior, especially in a fictional character that I'm supposed to be rooting for.
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. It was boring and the entire time I was reading it I was counting the pages until the end.
serena_af's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
hlizmarie's review
2.0
Eddie Hudson, a police officer, is responding to a regular call of a fight in progress only to get attacked by people who don't respond to pepper spray, shouted orders or getting shot. So begins a harrowing night while Officer Hudson fights his way through the city and hordes of zombies to find his wife and infant son. A lot of the book seems pretty standard to me. There are some great moments where you're biting your nails wondering how he's going to get out of this mess but then there are some moments that made no sense to me. The start of the novel is most effective since it's always horrible to read through the slow process of everyone figuring out what's going on. Unfortunately as the book went on and the gore really kept piling up it had less of an impact. The character of Marcus in particular bothered me. As an old partner of Eddie's I expected something other than a class clown in the midst of these horrors but Marcus is exactly that. At one point he starts flirting with a random reporter and tries to save her only to let her get eaten in the back of their own patrol car! After her leg gets ripped off they make a crack about it being a shame since she had great legs. As our narrator and his allies got desensitized to the violence so did I and that's not what I was looking for. I want to be horrified to the end and this didn't deliver.
swirls's review
1.0
Well, that was a steamy pile of... disappointment. It's basically a summary of a really bad zombie video game. I ended up speedreading through just because I was curious about how San Antonio would be described and I had a lazy morning. I wouldn't have cared enough to finish the video game lol. Next!
glitterbomb47's review against another edition
3.0
2.5 stars. The character development is poor. Every female character (there are only 3 who speak) are all idiots. But it was a fun read.
beaksmeep's review against another edition
3.0
Saw some booktok that was like, if you like this read this, then listed this book. So I was like okay yeah I like that. This is a series? Awesome. So I read it and it’s boring. No interest in reading the rest in the series now.
shan198025's review against another edition
4.0
Dead City is a fun book. It's a thrill ride start to finish. Ok, so the action is a little far-fetched but ummmmm hello these are zombies. We've suspended reality already. I am willing to admit that a few characters are TSTL but well they don't so it works out.
linbee83's review against another edition
3.0
An alright book, but I just felt like we were running around from place to place the whole book. Takes place in one night, and the descriptions aren't always that clear.
A pretty good book, I am probably going to continue the series. But this is definitely a series book, could not work as a stand alone.
A pretty good book, I am probably going to continue the series. But this is definitely a series book, could not work as a stand alone.
anubis9's review against another edition
4.0
OK, This is probably more like 3 1/2 stars.
This is a good solid zombie book.
It is told from the point of view of a San Antonio police officer, and you can tell that the author really knows his stuff.
There's a nice balance of why did this happen vs. how do we survive, and the world is populated by very interesting characters that behave "realistically" to the zombie outbreak.
My only real problem with the book, is that the end of the came very abruptly. It seemed like a lot of stuff was just rushed at the end to reach the end. (I didn't realize that the book had a preview of the sequel at the end, so it literally ended about 25 pages before I thought it would.)
One of the things I liked most about the book was all the little details and insight into the main character's thoughts and feelings. This wasn't an action hero, this was a typical blue collar cop with a wife and baby somewhere out there. A lot of the details and flavor seemed to get lost in the last 30 pages of the book in favor of wrapping it up.
So while the ending was a little disappointing, I still really liked the book and I'm very anxious to dive into the sequel.
I definitely want to know "what happens next."
This is a good solid zombie book.
It is told from the point of view of a San Antonio police officer, and you can tell that the author really knows his stuff.
There's a nice balance of why did this happen vs. how do we survive, and the world is populated by very interesting characters that behave "realistically" to the zombie outbreak.
My only real problem with the book, is that the end of the came very abruptly. It seemed like a lot of stuff was just rushed at the end to reach the end. (I didn't realize that the book had a preview of the sequel at the end, so it literally ended about 25 pages before I thought it would.)
One of the things I liked most about the book was all the little details and insight into the main character's thoughts and feelings. This wasn't an action hero, this was a typical blue collar cop with a wife and baby somewhere out there. A lot of the details and flavor seemed to get lost in the last 30 pages of the book in favor of wrapping it up.
So while the ending was a little disappointing, I still really liked the book and I'm very anxious to dive into the sequel.
I definitely want to know "what happens next."