David Moody’s ALL ROADS END HERE is a very strong follow-up to ONE OF US WILL BE DEAD BY MORNING, the first in his second HATER trilogy, and in my opinion one of the strongest in the series.
If you’re not familiar with HATER, it’s about a final war spanning the human race that begins with a certain percentage of the population begins to react with terror and hate against anybody not sharing the Hater gene. The Haters, as they’re called, start killing everybody else, and the government reacts with a program of detainment then extermination. Most of the first series focuses on the Hater point of view, while the second focuses on the Unchanged.
ALL ROADS END HERE picks up soon after ONE OF US WILL BE DEAD BY MORNING leaves off, where Matt finally makes it home to his city, now turned into a massive, overcrowded refugee camp under siege by thousands of Haters. His months spent trying to get home have taught him how to be a survivor while in a constant state of extreme danger. Now he must acclimate himself to being around people again, though the struggle to survive continues. Soon, he discovers a group trying to condition the Haters to accept the Unchanged so as to broker peace, but it may have bigger, more nefarious plans.
From back in the day when Moody was self-publishing HATER and his AUTUMN series as PDFs, I’ve been a fan of his original twist on tropes and meticulous attention to realism and human psychology under stress. While his work deals with the fantastic, everything about it rings true and makes the story, characters, and action all the more compelling. With ALL ROADS END HERE, Moody once again proves he’s still got it and remains one of the best authors of zombie fiction.
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