phungus's Full Review: J. L. Bourne - Day by Day Armageddon
Day by Day Armageddon is a pretty interesting entry into the popular zombie holocaust genre of horror stories. This book, written in journal format, tells the story of one man trying to make it against overwhelming odds. It's an indie release, and has done quite well considering no major publisher was behind it.
Telling the story in journal form does work pretty well for this type of story, and it makes the book a lot easier to read in short segments. I found this method of storytelling to work well because it cuts down on a lot of descriptive passages and instead focuses on the feelings and actions of the main character, so you are right there along with one person for the duration of the novel. I also liked how the whole thing snowballed from beginning to end, and there are plenty of times where it gets hard to put down because things happen one after the other.
One thing about zombie stories, be it books or movies, is that they tend to be very formulaic. Sure, the characters are different and unique things may happen to them, but the overall plot design is very much the same. This book is no different. Things start off normal, then there is some event, then some people get a weird disease that nobody can identify, and before long the whole thing turns into a global epidemic with only a handful of survivors. From there, the story focuses on a small group of people trying to make it in a world overrun with bloodthirsty zombies. That's pretty much the zombie book/movie outline.
The really good zombie stories, like some of the George Romero movies, use zombies as a metaphor for human behavior. Be it a social commentary on violence or consumerism, the best of the zombie genre has plenty of double meaning that begs to be analyzed. In this book, I didn't really pick up on any kind of underlying themes. Instead, it's just a survival story about a small group of people trying to be resourceful and figure a way to live in an undead world. This is a fairly intense book, but I much prefer zombie books where the author is trying to put across some kind of message beneath all the gory horror stuff.
One aspect of this story that I did like was that it doubled up on the holocaust aspect by combining zombie infestation with nuclear fallout. Shortly after the zombies became more widespread, the government started nuking the biggest cities in hopes of taking them out, but it only seemed to make them stronger. This isn't explored too much in this book, but hopefully will be in the next one. I did like how the author kept the characters, and therefore the reader, mostly uninformed about what was happening. The uncertainty added to the scariness.
The publisher behind this book, Permuted Press, is an independent outfit that specializes in horror stories. Judging by the odd 6x9 size of this book, I would guess they had it printed by Lulu.com. One problem you often (unfortunately) run into with independent stuff is quality control. This book is full of errors that should have been caught during proofreading. I counted three times where ‘to' was used instead of ‘too', numerous occasions where no space was placed after a period, and one part where someone's name was not capitalized. This book could have used a good editor.
In the end, I enjoyed reading Day by Day Armageddon and will read the sequel. Despite some editorial issues, I think it is pretty impressive that a book like this from an independent publisher could get as much notice as it has. Check it out if you like zombie stories. It's not a great book, but it is a good one.
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