In APOCALYPSE Z: THE BEGINNING OF THE END by Spanish author Manel Loureiro, the zombie apocalypse sweeps Europe and finally Spain, forcing a man living alone to survive on his own. The story is rendered as a journal. I was excited to read it, as the book has received a ton of positive Amazon reviews. Unfortunately, I wish it had been more exciting. The setting was cool–I loved the fact it was set in Spain–but the story is your basic guy lives alone, everybody turns into a zombie, and he has to go from Point A to Point B in a desolate world, killing zombies on the way.
Meanwhile, the journal format didn’t work for me. The story begins with him starting a journal, and instead of writing about his day or his life, he focuses on an odd bit of news of something happening in Russia–which of course turns out to be the trigger of the zombie apocalypse. What might have been interesting is if the story began with several blog posts about gardening or whatever, maybe something that will establish he has a special skill he’ll need later in the book and also establish him as a real person. Over time, global events seep into the blog until the blog becomes exclusively about those events. When the power goes out, he switches to a written journal because he’s used to blogging and it comforts him. Something like that flows naturally and for me would have been more compelling and made me care more about the narrator and what happened to him.
Anyhow, that’s just my opinion. Amazon is filled with great reviews for this book, so maybe check it out for yourself. Note that the sequel, APOCALYPSE Z: DARK DAYS, is coming out in October.
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