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connorjdaley's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
I happened across this on Amazon while ordering my Spooky Season reads and I’m so glad I did. A zombie-apocalypse survival horror novella? Yes, yes please. This actually won in a poll for my next read, so I can thank my friends/followers for this awesome 1 day read.
I picked this up and started it right after finishing Prosper’s Demon by K. J. Parker, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I kind of expected to have that kind of in between, oh I have to learn the setting and characters again feeling, but I was so so wrong and pleasantly surprised. I was sucked in from the first page. To put it simply, this book is so riveting, a whirlwind of anxiety and adrenaline and edge-of-your-seat scares. When I called it riveting my fiancé said I hadn’t said that about a book in a good while…so let that stand for something.
To me, this novella is exactly what I loved about the early The Walking Dead, the anxiety of learning the world and understanding that it only takes one single zombie to end your life. That the more comfortable and adept you get, it still only takes one mistake, one slip up, just a little panic, and it’s all over. That human reaction is the most realistic feeling to me about the genre.
I also really liked how the author subverted the usual genre trope of the deterioration of humanity, instead giving us a bad character that was bad prior. That doesn’t mean that humanity doesn’t deteriorate with the constant zombie killing, just that in this case the bad had hit their depths before it started.
Revenge was oh so sweet, an absolute banger 5/5*, please read this. As the back cover states, if there isn’t a sequel, it’d be a damn shame.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Gore, Incest, Murder, Rape, Grief, Sexual violence, Cursing, Fire/Fire injury, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual assault, Blood, Body horror, Death, Sexual harassment, and Violence
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