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A review by lilyn_g
Sea Sick by Iain Rob Wright
3.0
If you can instantly tell how an infection spread, within the first 10 percent of a novel, is it worth going on? Are your expectations too high? I mean, it is a zombie novel and few of them actually deal with how the infection spreads as any significant part of the story. So, I shrugged off my doubts and kept reading. At best, I’d be surprised, at worst….well, I’ve read a lot of so-so novels lately, what’s one more, right?
Sea Sick is, at 218 pages, the epitome of a quick and mindless read. A peculiar mix of basic zombie movie (though the zombies actually have little ‘screen time’), murder mystery, and Groundhog Day (albeit with a complete lack of obnoxiously semi-funny characters), it offers a few unexpected twists but unfortunately strikes too many points of predictability with both happenings and cardboard cut-out characters.
I did appreciate that the author took pains to try to keep things at least semi-realistic (as much as one can with the Groundhog Day plot), and provided natural limitations and consequences to the locations and actions that happen. That was pleasantly surprising. However, it doesn’t quite make up for the severe bog down of non-happenings in the middle of the read. Honestly, it’s already a small number of pages. Cutting twenty or so out of the middle would not have made reading time that much less and probably would have significantly strengthened the story. Then there’s the epilogue. C’mon, can we just stop with epilogues? Just stop. The story wasn’t bad, but it could have ended well enough without the epilogue. It took me from “eh, predictable but okay” to eye-rolling “Oh yay, look, how original” levels of inner snark.
Overall, Sea Sick isn’t bad and I can actually see myself picking up more of Iain Rob Wright’s books, but this story seems like it was pounded out for the sake of getting out a story rather than having any true drive or substance to it. Mind you, I don’t ask for much from my zombie novels, as they are my guilty pleasure, but I need just a touch more than what was delivered in Sea Sick.
Sea Sick is, at 218 pages, the epitome of a quick and mindless read. A peculiar mix of basic zombie movie (though the zombies actually have little ‘screen time’), murder mystery, and Groundhog Day (albeit with a complete lack of obnoxiously semi-funny characters), it offers a few unexpected twists but unfortunately strikes too many points of predictability with both happenings and cardboard cut-out characters.
I did appreciate that the author took pains to try to keep things at least semi-realistic (as much as one can with the Groundhog Day plot), and provided natural limitations and consequences to the locations and actions that happen. That was pleasantly surprising. However, it doesn’t quite make up for the severe bog down of non-happenings in the middle of the read. Honestly, it’s already a small number of pages. Cutting twenty or so out of the middle would not have made reading time that much less and probably would have significantly strengthened the story. Then there’s the epilogue. C’mon, can we just stop with epilogues? Just stop. The story wasn’t bad, but it could have ended well enough without the epilogue. It took me from “eh, predictable but okay” to eye-rolling “Oh yay, look, how original” levels of inner snark.
Overall, Sea Sick isn’t bad and I can actually see myself picking up more of Iain Rob Wright’s books, but this story seems like it was pounded out for the sake of getting out a story rather than having any true drive or substance to it. Mind you, I don’t ask for much from my zombie novels, as they are my guilty pleasure, but I need just a touch more than what was delivered in Sea Sick.