shecurmudgeon

A little uneven in places, but different enough in the mashup of the misfit-superhero genre and the zombie-apocalypse survival genre that I enjoyed it despite the multiple POVs and the "then" & "now" chronology changeups.  First in a series. 

The superheroes' powers come to them without explanation, not long before the zombie epidemic begins, and there's lots of moral greyness & grappling & gore, as one would hope when it's the end of the world.

There's a somewhat detached emotional air to the storytelling, and the author doesn't really pass my Bechdel test because there aren't 1) enough female characters 2) enough non-sexy female characters doing straightforward things that aren't either shoved in your face as BADASS or BITCHY and 3) the one female "superhero" also fails the Hawkeye test for sexy costuming and not objectifying one's self (or others). Too much of her inner narrative is taken up with no one figuring out who she was before she became Stealth, rather than being the supposedly hyper-intelligent person she is, and too much time is given to the hero "St. George" as the unabashed & un-grey good guy whom everyone can't help but admire.  I would have enjoyed a less-clinical, less-using-her-sexuality-against-others, more complex Stealth. 

That said, there's enough of a taste of backstory & variety in the superheroes & enough world-building in the survivalist encampment the heroes have built that between that and the action (kind of brain-dead, heh heh, zombie humor, excuse me) that propels the climax along that at the end of the book you're curious about what happens next, though the book could also have stood along.  It's the first in a trilogy. I'm trying to decide if I'll finish the rest or hold off for a bit while my Walking Dead graphic novel obsession works its way through my system.

Read on my Nook HD+, downloaded from the Google Play bookshop from their 2.99 & under section.