Plague Of The Dead: The Morningstar Strain by Z. A. Recht (original) (raw)

The Blurb On The Back:

The end begins with an unprecedented vital outbreak:

Morningstar. The infected are subject to delirium, fever, violent behaviour ... and a one hundred percent mortality rate.

But the end is only the beginning:

The victims return from death to walk the earth. When a massive military operation fails to contain the plague of the living dead, it escalates into a worldwide pandemic.

Now, a single law of nature dominates the global landscape:

Live or die, kill or be killed. On one side of the world, thousands of miles from home, a battle-hardened general surveys the remnants of his command: a young medic, a veteran photographer, a brash private, and dozens of refugees – all are his responsibility. While in the United States, an army colonel discovers the darker side of Morningstar and collaborates with a well-known journalist to leak the information to the public ...

Mombasa in Kenya becomes ground zero for a strange and terrifying sickness that sees its victims succumb to delirium, fever and homicidal tendencies before dying. Even then the sickness doesn’t end – reanimating its victims to continue their rampage against the living.

As the US military struggles to contain what is dubbed the Morningstar strain within Africa, shadowy governmental organisations work to prevent the truth of the situation from coming out. Lt Col Anna Demilio of the US army works to get the truth out while working on a cure, liaising with Major General Francis Sherman as he coordinates the defence against the infected. As the dead surge in greater numbers, dark truths about the virus begin to emerge and the living discover that they have to fight each other as much as they have to fight the dead.

Recht’s zombie novel contains everything that’s good and bad about the genre. Where it works is as a story of survival against ever worsening odds. The scenes depicting the attempts of the US military to contain the infection within Africa, while geographically questionable, are clear, coherent, fast paced and full of adrenalin. The later scenes involving the US navy are similarly well paced.

Where it falls down is the fact that every character is a stereotype – the truth hungry journalist, the cynical-seen-it-all soldiers, the naive young medical worker, the wise African worker, the story hungry photographer. This is a shame because deeper characterisation would bring a lot more emotion to the inevitable character depths that pepper the story. Also weak is the shadowy conspiracy element to the story, which feels like something out of a bad soap opera plus at times the plot jumps around too much and there is a wide cast of characters – so wide in fact that at times I lost track of who was who.

For all its faults though, the book is a fast read and has enough to hold the interest of zombie fans and I will definitely be reading the sequel.

The Verdict:

Although this contains many of the elements that I enjoy about zombie novels in general, it’s let down by a wide cast of cardboard characters and a plot that jumps around a little too much. For all this, I’m enough of a zombie fan to want to read the sequel, but those new to the genre may want to look elsewhere.

Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the free copy of this book.

Cross-posted to bookish, books, bookworming and booky_talk.