Search - Dead City

This is a nice and suspenseful book. Its an easy read for a horror fan. The author is good at injecting small little gasp moments. He puts the characters in a bind making you think they are done for and quickly gets them out of it. That said theres a lot of death and gore which anyone who has seen a zombie movie would expect. Its not the best book Ive ever read but its decent and worth the short time it took me to read it. 3 out of 5.

Dead City by Joe McKinney is an action packed zombie novel and a strong first novel. Dead City has all the action you could want out of a zombie book and the main character is pretty well fleshed out. If Dead City has any true weakness, it's the lack of depth in the setting and the story may be a little bit too straight forward.

The story follows Eddie, a San Antonio cop, as tries to survive the zombie hordes and tries to get home to his Wife and child. Along the way he has to overcome some hard decisions and at times trust people who he normally wouldn't.

Dead City scores big points for action and gore content. The action scenes are exciting; fast paced, and keeps the pages turning. Gore is frequent and vivid. I have heard others say that this would make for a great movie, I have to agree. With the amount of action, the compelling action, and the way each scene cuts away it would make for a great film. Hopefully, some day, we'll see a movie happen.

My only reservations about Dead City are that the setting is little blurry, characters beyond the Eddie are weak and it doesn't make you think. There is enough there that nothing seems out of context, but it also left me asking a lot of questions. Eddie is truly a great character, but beyond him, the rest are fairly uninteresting but serve a purpose. This is no philosophical zombie novel, that's for sure. It's not really required for a zombie novel to be a great read, but it is nice when you do read one that gets the brain ticking. These are all pretty minor issues and in fact may not bother many readers at all.

In the end Dead City is well worth a read for it's sheer master of action and gore in a zombie novel. I cannot think of a reason why a fan of zombie fiction would be disappointed with this book.

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Completely enjoyed this book. I stayed up late into the night to finish it because I did not want to put it down.

I enjoyed the fact that the author even made us think about the ethical side of zombies. What if zombies were living human beings who had caught a virus and turned into cannibalistic killers? That is they question that we left to consider after reading this book.

Over all a great read and I am really looking forward to more books by this author.

First off, I'm a zombie fangirl if there ever was one. I've read some extremely bad zombie fiction in my time, but this isn't one of them. I was pleasantly surprised at how this novel caught me and kept me interested. There are no lulls in action and the fast pace and heavy gore-packed action made me finish this novel in on sitting. I haven't done that in years.

I give it a three and a half because while it is entertaining and grammatically correct (you wouldn't believe how many self-published or small publishing house-published stories need some serious editing), it is, after all, a zombie novel. There are no deep thought-provoking conversations or events (although there are attempts made), the side characters are not anything that you could get attached to or cry over, and there are no amazing leaps in zombie canon. There are slow zombies and a few fast ones and all seem to ignore every wound save for headshots. There is a good bit of discussion about how the zombies are actually living beings with heartbeats and such, but that simply makes this a novel more along the Rage virus of 28 Days Later.

There are mentions at the end of a PETA-like organization rallying for zombie rights (of sorts), which led me into many a hilarious daydream. However, there is nothing innovative or new about this story. It is simply an action-filled, fast-paced, gore-filled shambling thing that didn't even make me scared to turn out the lights. It was a fun read, a fluffy read, and I'm sure you'll enjoy it without having to look for anything deep or meaningful.

This was a great zombie book it kept me on my toes and i cant stop reading it even after i read it

While the battle scenes got to be repetitive after a while, I enjoyed this horror book about a virus which turned people into zombies. I only wish that the zombie portion ended earlier in the book so that the story would move onto how Eddie and others dealt with the aftermath.