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A review by weweresotired
The Infects by Sean Beaudoin
2.0
See the full review on Short & Sweet Reviews.
Nick is an interesting main character, conflicted and sarcastic and not very confident. He just wants to keep his head down, stay out of trouble, and go home when his time is up. His fellow campers are a bunch of stereotypes -- the Hispanic kid who might be a gang member, the Russian kid whose dialogue is so predictable that I'm surprised he doesn't say "In Soviet Russia, zombie eat you". (Probably because the target audience wasn't even alive when the USSR collapsed.) For most of the book, there's nothing new, next to the fart jokes and masturbation jokes and teen-boys-leering-at-girls jokes. But then you get to the end of the book, and realize that this is a traditional zombie story with a little bit of a twist when the big reveal happens at the end. That twist is what elevated the book from being "meh" to being something that deserved a little more thought from me. It took an approach that you don't usually -- or ever -- see in zombie stories, and while I love me some zombie stories, I also love stories that challenge your expectations of the genre. Anything that turns the zombie genre on its ear is worth a thumbs up.
Nick is an interesting main character, conflicted and sarcastic and not very confident. He just wants to keep his head down, stay out of trouble, and go home when his time is up. His fellow campers are a bunch of stereotypes -- the Hispanic kid who might be a gang member, the Russian kid whose dialogue is so predictable that I'm surprised he doesn't say "In Soviet Russia, zombie eat you". (Probably because the target audience wasn't even alive when the USSR collapsed.) For most of the book, there's nothing new, next to the fart jokes and masturbation jokes and teen-boys-leering-at-girls jokes. But then you get to the end of the book, and realize that this is a traditional zombie story with a little bit of a twist when the big reveal happens at the end. That twist is what elevated the book from being "meh" to being something that deserved a little more thought from me. It took an approach that you don't usually -- or ever -- see in zombie stories, and while I love me some zombie stories, I also love stories that challenge your expectations of the genre. Anything that turns the zombie genre on its ear is worth a thumbs up.