2008-05-30 A promising start

Ibarra is not a professional writer, just a man that enjoys writing stories and is fulfilling a dream of being published. For all his efforts the book culd have been also worse. On the other hand it could have been better and is far from the best in the genre.

George returning to the school where he teaches to fetch a gift from his late girlfirend was a nice human touch (to me at least), irrational and placing him in some mortal danger. In times of great stress and strife, we are not the most rational of beings, proven time and again throughout this book and others in the genre.

While short on substance in places, I did feel for some of the characters and somethings wondered if we really needed to know every last detail of them being eaten alive. Some of the detailing is very gratuitous and while I am a gore fan, I thought some went a little overboard.

The FEMA camps and initial reactions to the plague did have me reminiscing over other disasters that have happened in the USA (and some of these are also mentioned!), so it makes me wonder how many of Ibarra's on personal views made it into the book, seeing how he's placed as much of his own personal experiences into it.

The flashback of Georges' girlfriends death wasn't needed, but it did add about 8 ages to the books length. The reason I thought it's not needed though is because it gives away to much. The mystery should have been kept there so some parts of the book are not ruined by the early spoiler.

A promising first book and I look forward oto reading the second in the series with hopes of seeing further books from him in the future.