The First Days by Rhiannon Frater
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Ever since reading [b:Feed|7094569|Feed (Newsflesh, #1)|Mira Grant|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1335958027s/7094569.jpg|7351419] by Mira Grant I have been strangely drawn to zombie fiction. (Thank you Wendy, Maja, and Michelle) This is especially strange considering that I'm usually pretty squeamish and blood and guts fiction has never been my thing. While I'm still not a fan of the gore, for some reason, I seem to enjoy stories about how people survive in a world gone completely insane. The First Days certainly fits in that category with a sizable helping of the gory bits included.
The First Days begins by traumatizing the reader into a state of frozen terror by describing how a woman is watching her 3 year old's bloody fingers scrabbling under the door in an attempt to get to her and goes on to explain how the woman had earlier walked in on her husband consuming the child in his crib and she wonders how there was enough left of him to make it downstairs since her husband has always been known to have a big appetite. With such an insane beginning, I was repulsed by the story and also intrigued with where this author could possibly go from there.
While I don't believe The First Days had the emotional impact of Feed, it definitely held my interest from start to finish. The rest of the book didn't exactly fulfill the promise of that first chapter, but there was no shortage of zombie action either. The fast moving plot and well written female characters made up for the fact that the male characters, other than Jenni's stepson Jason, were pretty meh. I also felt like there were a lot of unnecessary explanations about Katie's sexuality. Jenni and Katie's weird bond was fascinating but the stand-out character for me was Narit, who fascinated me for some reason.
The First Days is a blood soaked crazy look at how chaotic a zombie apocalypse can be. I absolutely enjoyed this from beginning to end and am looking forward to reading the second in the series.
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2 comments:
Those tiny fingers will be the death of me. ;) I LOVED the zombie babies!! I'm glad you liked this one, I thought it was pretty entertaining, too.
Wendy @ The Midnight Garden
This sounds like something I would really like! Zombie apocalypses are a personal favourite of mine and I've heard such great things about this book too. :) I'm really glad you enjoyed it, Donna!
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