Slow Burn — Zero Day - Bobby Adair

    2013; 236 pages.  Book 1 (out of 10) in the "Slow Burn" series.  Full Title: Slow Burn – Zero Day.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Horror; Plague; Zombies.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    There’s ethnic cleansing in Somalia and it’s spreading into neighboring African countries.  Ho hum.  There’s civil unrest in China, and the military there is cracking down heavily.  Who cares.  There’s violence in the Middle East.  That’s nothing to worry about for Zed, who lives in Austin, Texas.

 

    What is a problem for him, however, is having to attend a family lunch at his mom’s and stepdad’s house.  There will be the usual hassling and talking-to from both of them, telling Zed to get his life together.  But that’s par for the course; he’s ready for it.

 

    He definitely wasn’t ready for what he saw when he opened the front door.  His mom laying dead in a pool of blood, in the living room.  His stepdad hunched over her, slurping away on her blood.  And a strange semi-mutilated guy sitting in a chair by the fireplace, watching the macabre scene.

 

    I have a feeling lunch is not going to be served.

 

What’s To Like...

    Slow Burn – Zero Day is the opening book in a 10-volume (plus one novella) horror series set in Bobby Adair’s hometown of Austin, Texas.  The tale is told from the first-person POV, Zed’s, and the action starts right away.  It’s not a spoiler to reveal that the storyline has the standard “zombie” structure: zillions of infected undead creatures seeking out the vastly-outnumbered, uninfected human survivors.

 

    However in this series a third, even smaller category is spawned: the “infected yet semi-immune” victims.  Zed of course is one of those.  Although his skin has grown pale, and he is running a fever, he retains his human thought-processes and, perhaps most importantly, tasted horrible to zombies trying to eat him.

 

    It is quickly established that the zombie infection originated in Africa.  From there it spread rapidly into Asia.  There’s no cure in sight, and it has reached the United States frighteningly fast.  I found it eerie how this mirrored the real-world COVID epidemic that hit America in 2020,.  It started elsewhere, we knew it was coming, and there was nothing we could do to stop it.  

 

    The main storyline follows Zed as he searches for others who are uninfected.  That is no small task.  The zombies need to eat too and are swarming throughout Austin looking for delicious uninfected victims to eat.  Zed’s survivalist skills are minimal (so are mine), food is scarce (and for now being scrounged from vending machines), and acquiring weaponry (mostly dropped by now-dead soldiers sent to kill zombies) is dangerous, bordering on suicidal.

 

    Zed needs to find some long-term solutions to all those challenges on the college campus of UT-Austin where he's holed up.  I’m sure his degree in Philosophy will be of great help in this endeavor.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.3/5 based on 4,558 ratings and 1,629 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.91/5 based on 5,830 ratings and 501 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “They’re going to round us all up, eventually.  We’ll get a year or more just for busting out of jail.  We’ll get time for rioting, and maybe even capital murder for that dead cop you saw.”

    My mouth hung open.  I hadn’t thought of any of that.  Finally, I said, “But we were running for our lives.  We were in as much danger as the cops.”

    Murphy shook his head.  “A jury in Travis County might believe that about you, if you hadn’t already stabbed your stepdad thirty-seven times...”  (pg. 62)

 

    “You guys nearly attacked me coming out of the elevator.”

    “When was the last time you looked in a mirror?  You look like one of the infected.”

    I looked down at myself.  My skin had grown paler since I last checked.  My arm was bleeding from another bite wound.  I had blood and brain splattered on my shirt from when I shot the infected guy in the tunnel.

    I looked back at Wilkins and shrugged.  “I clean up nicely, though.”  (pg. 164)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Kindle version of Slow Burn – Zero Day currently costs $4.99 at Amazon.  The paperback format, which is what I read, costs $9.95.  The other individual e-books in the series go for $4.99 apiece, with the exception of Book 10 which runs a dollar more.  Alternatively, you can buy the 3-ebook bundle for $9.99; or the 9-ebook bundle for $5.99.  Yeah, I don’t understand the bundle pricing structure either.

 

The great “why” questions of life very suddenly held zero importance.  (pg. 133)

    The profanity level in Slow Burn – Zero Day is moderate.  I noted 18 instances in the first 10% of the book, primarily of the milder ilk.  Later on, some  f-bombs spring up, plus a couple references to male genitalia.

 

    I spotted only three typos: ally/alley; form/from; Mary/Marcy, and one indenting glitch, which no doubt arose during the printing stage.  Kudos to whoever did the editing on this.

 

    The main issue I had was with the storytelling.  The tale ends at a pivotal spot, but with none of the plot threads having been tied up.  Zero.  Nada.  So Book One is little more than an introduction to the 10-book series.  Which means by reading it, you are committing to nine more books, even if you read them via one of the bundles.

 

    Unfortunately, I acquired the paperback version, coming across it at a nearby used-book store.  I doubt that the paperback version of Book 2, Slow Burn – Infected will show up there anytime soon.  So sadly, this is probably as far as I'll go in this series.

 

    6 Stars.  One last thing.  I became familiar with Bobby Adair’s novels via Facebook, where he regularly posts ads, mostly for the audiobook bundle of this series.  I don’t do audiobooks, but thanks to the ads, his name became engrained in my head, and I recognized it instantly while browsing at the bookstore.  So if you’re an indie author endeavoring to enlarge your reading audience, you might consider touting your books on Facebook.

Chronicles of M - Nicholas Forristal

    2013; 330 pages.  Book One  (out of 6) in the Chronicles of M series  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Paranormal; Zombies; Dark Fantasy.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

    For Sam Horn, this is a long-awaited day: it’s his first day of retirement, he’s here at the bank to make a deposit, and he’s feeling good.  For thirty-three years he’s been an agent for various spoiled movie celebrities, catering to their every whim and convincing studios they should put up with his clients’ insane demands.  But that’s all behind him now, and nothing’s going to ruin his day.

    Well, maybe not.  When a gang of bank robbers takes the whole place hostage, things could turn ugly.  But fortunately, Sam’s mastered the art of persuasion during his long career in Tinsel-town.  When his clients won’t be in the latest movie unless they get a gallon jug filled with red M&Ms, a bottle of whiskey made in Scotland between the years 1950 and 1960, and a dressing room with excellent Wifi reception, it’s up to her agent to sweet-talk the studio to feel good about acquiescing.

    It helps, of course, that our would-be robbers are rather dim-witted.  So it’s just another day at the job for Sam.  He just needs to convince them to set the hostages free, give themselves up, all in the belief that the courts will give them a lighter sentence for cooperating so freely.  No big deal.

    It works like a charm, Sam gets a small mention in the news reports, and he once again settles down to begin enjoying his retirement.  So imagine his surprise when he gets a message that someone saw his negotiating skills and wants to Sam to come to work for his company.  The details, however, are hush-hush until he commits.

    Now why would they do that?

What’s To Like...

    The Chronicles of M is the first installment in a 6-book series with the same name.  The series is complete, which is always nice to know.  There's action immediately, although thereafter it becomes somewhat sporadic.  This is a paranormal book, with the primary focus on zombies.

    I liked Nicholas Forristal’s approach to this.  Zombies are generally portrayed as slow-moving, brainless hero-fodder, and that gets old after a while.  Here you’ll learn about the 5-stages of zombie-ism, and maybe even develop a bit of empathy for them.

    I also liked the relationship between the two main protagonists – our hero Sam and our superhero “M”.  Instead of being buddy-buddies from the get-go, things are rather “frosty”.  M’s kind of a butthead, and Sam has few skills to complement his superhero pal.  The story is told in the first-person POV, mostly Sam’s, but a couple chapters are from M’s perspective.  There’s quite a bit of cussing, almost all by M, but hey, he’s just a hot-headed kid, isn’t he?

    There aren’t a lot of characters to keep track of – just focus on Sam, M, Thomas, and Marcus and you’ll be okay.  Don’t be fooled by a cameo appearance by someone named Ned; I’m pretty sure that was a pair of typos that should’ve been Todd.  The settings are similarly sparse – once you get beyond the NYC intro, you’re pretty much limited to the United Hero Defense ("UHD") headquarters and an out-in-the-sticks town called Dead Man’s Bluff.

    The ending is okay, but not spectacular.  Sam decides to sign up with the UHD (well, you knew that was gonna happen, elsewise there’d be no series, right?), and the causes of M’s mood issues are revealed, if not resolved.  There are lots more unanswered questions; presumably these are addressed as the series progresses.  Indeed, the ending felt more like a pause than a climax, albeit at a logical point.  But Nicholas Forristal’s writing skills were sufficient to  keep things from bogging down.

Excerpts...

    I sit up in my chair, “Okay, so M is a crime fighter, like a superhero?  And you are his sidekick?  Do you two wear costumes?  Can you fly?”  I let the sarcasm flow out of me.  M is maybe nineteen, at most.  Thomas actually thinks I’ll believe M is as old as I am?

    “Costume?  Have you ever tried to do anything in spandex, or even a suit?  I assure you, it’s no fun.”  (loc. 414)

    An explosion knocks me on my backside.  The door on the left side shoots across the hall and slams into the opposing wall with a thunderous boom.  Fire peeks out of the doorway as black clouds of smoke roll across the ceiling.  A man screams, “I told you not to do that!”

    Another voice responds, “Sorry, forgot the catalyst.”

    “Catalyst?  Are you kidding me?  If you had used the catalyst we’d be dead right now, you idiot!”

    “Don’t call me an idiot, jerk.”

    “Don’t call me a jerk, idiot.”  (loc. 1883)

Kindle Details...

    Chronicles of M sells for $0.99 at Amazon.  The other five books in the series go for $2.99 each.  You can buy the whole series bundled together for $15.94, but that saves you absolutely nothing.  And finally, you can buy books 1-3 bundled together for $6.99, but if you do that, you need to take a remedial math course.

To steal a line from Vonnegut, M is “unstuck in time.”  (loc. 2062)

    There are some quibbles.  While I wouldn’t call the pacing slow, it certainly isn’t brisk either.  We don’t meet our first zombie until 50%-Kindle.  Everything before that is world-building.  This is necessary, I suppose, for the 6-book series, but it’s going to be disappointing to anyone expecting the usual zombie-must-find-brains mayhem.

    The main snag for me was the lack of a main storyline.  The blurb makes it sound like it’s a tale about investigating some zombie killings, and it’s true that there's a plotline involving that.  But it’s almost a story tangent, and from start to finish, it lasts about 10%-Kindle.  Resolving it is neither difficult nor tense.

    All this isn’t helped by a number of side-stories that became a bit tedious.  I counted four of them – the tour of the HQ, the “mad baker”, Marcus’s backstory, and then M’s backstory as well.  Do they add to the world-building?  Yes, definitely.  Do they keep you on the edge of your seat?  No.

    In general, Chronicles of M reminded me of the first Men in Black movie, where Will Smith spends a lot of time trying to figure out what the heck is going on.  But there, a galaxy needed saving.  Here, you have to be content with just figuring things out.

    7 Stars.  I’m unsure how much significance to put on these quibbles.  It could be that Nicholas Forristal intends this first book to simply be an introduction to the rest of the series: get the characters onstage; get the world-building out of the way, and set the tone.  If the next five books are action-packed with compelling storylines, this is a small price (literally and figuratively) to pay.  But if the next five books have more backstories than thrills and spills, then things could drag.