Harry Shannon (1)

4.5 Stars Review copy

Penelope Jean Miller, Sheriff of Flat Rock County, Nevada, is back and still fighting to stay alive, but this time Penny is fighting more than zombies. She and her rag-tag band of zombie fighters are also trying to remain one step ahead of the people who caused the disaster in the first place.

The Hungry 5 - All Hell Breaks Loose delivers. The fun starts in the prologue and continues right through to the shocking conclusion.

Steven W. Booth and Harry Shannon continue to show more breath life into the zombie sub-genre. "Miller approached and spotted a long-dead female behind the wheel. She appeared to have gotten stuck somehow, perhaps when she'd run out of gas and couldn't reach the pump. She had an old rusty pistol in her lap. Miller guessed she had been bitten and then shot herself in the head to keep from coming back. She was wearing a nightgown and wore green, plastic curlers in her blood-splattered hair. Her mouth was open and flies had laid eggs within it. The corpse was not fully decayed. The odor of decay was now faint but still nauseating."

With old friends and new characters, the writers manage to keep things comfortable yet fresh and of course there is still the sexual tension between Penny and Scratch.

Once again, it's not necessary to read all the previous books in the series, but why miss out on all the fun. Will there be more books in the series? I've heard there will be, but once you read The Hungry 5 - All Hell Breaks Loose you will find yourself wondering how they'll manage to pull that off.

The Hungry 5 - All Hell Breaks Loose is available now from Genius Book Publishing though Amazon.com.

A fun read I can highly recommend. show less

*gasp*
Oh my god!! I was hooked from the freaking PROLOGUE...

At a military base in Nevada, a totally creeptastic guy, Lieutenant Albert is running some WICKED scary tests on, you know... humans... and ends up unleashing the WALKING DEAD after one of his "test subjects" reanimates on the autopsy table and bites an officer who then decided it BEST not to tell anyone what happened...

Sheriff Penny Miller- aka: the biggest, badass chick EVER, is sitting in her little office, when her deputy places show more a frantic call to her- claiming that ZOMBIES are decimating the town! Well, she's now concerned that her deputy is armed and on patrol... Drunk as a skunk. UNTIL she sees the masses of undead swarming the station as he tries to make it to safety.

Ever the "responsible" type, she goes to let the PRISONERS out of their cells- because she can't, in good consciousness, leave them there to be attacked by zombies! Four of them try and leave the jail before they realize it's a lost cause... And barricade themselves inside to fight the zombies off and wait them out! Only TWO survive the night.

Penny barely makes it through the wreckage of her once quaint little town, to her EX-husbands house. She's hardly ALIVE, and wondering how she'll even make it from the car to the front door when she hears her ex-husband's voice... Asking her 20 freaking questions!! To which she answers,

"I'm in a moderate level of distress at the moment." God I freaking LOVE this woman and her ability to take sarcasm to a whole new level!

Terrell Lee nurses her back to health and tells her he's ready to head out of town ASAP. Penny is clad in NOTHING but a Cowboys t-shirt... So it's that, or take her chances with whatever is in the mystery box that ex-hubby pulled out of the garage! She opens the box, only to find... wait for it... HER FREAKING WEDDING DRESS! (At this point... I am DYING...) Apparently the dress was the only thing he felt was worth saving from their divorce- she is HORRIFIED!

"I can't go out and do me some undead murdering while dressed like a red-state bitch on a reality show!"

They face biker gangs, the army, a crazy scientific creep... during the freaking zombie apocalypse... and she's panty-less the ENTIRE time, WEARING her freaking wedding dress! Come on, it just does NOT get better than this! They find help where I never would have expected, and I think I have a crush on Scratch. ;)

The Hungry is so FULL OF AWESOME, that I can't even describe it! It's action-packed from the first PAGE and oozing with witty, fabulous dialogue! This book defines Laugh Out Loud funny... often inappropriate, rude and utterly epic sarcasm from a completely rock your face off chick!

Read this... Read this NOW! You won't be sorry! show less

This review is based on a copy (epub version) received through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. In this, book IV of the DoubleDown series from JournalStone are two novellas: Biters, by Harry Shannon; and The Reborn, by Brett J. Talley. This combined ebook has supernatural and horror themes, with some profanity and sexual violence. Some minor editing and continuity errors are present in both stories, but only a few are distracting.

The first, shorter, and more conventional work, show more Biters, is set in near future post-apocalyptic Nevada, within a North America largely depopulated by a zombie plague. (As usual, we know nothing of how the rest of the world fared. There are rumours of safe havens in Canada and some coastal areas). Our hero, Buck Ryan, is a psychologically wounded veteran and former drug addict of Redneck extraction. His size, freakishly accurate shooting, and ‘habitual paranoia’ have served him well in a world in which customary morals have been cast aside, and herds of zombies range the countryside searching out concentrations of humans. As we set our scene, Buck drives towards a fortified enclave to the soundtrack of an old Randy Travis tune. (I like to think it was the one that goes ‘…and I hear tell the road to Hell is paved with good intentions’). He is seeking his old flame Sarah Gallagher, a jaded survivor living precariously in a former casino and strip club lead by the one-time petty criminal, D.D. Here, the worst aspects of small town life are magnified under feudal rule. Strangely, money is still in use, but barter and salvage predominate. Those not sunk in wanton denial are scheming for any advantage: power, information, supplies. And here is where the heist comes in: Sarah is in deep, but has a plan, one that can get both of them free and clear. Surely it can’t be that easy, and it isn’t.

There’s some whimsy in the little details here - barricades festooned with Christmas lights, neon still flashing ‘NUDE NUDE NUDE NUDE’ - and a hardbitten, Noir-ish turn of phrase I would have liked to see more of. A dancer’s eyes are ‘focused on looking for life in another galaxy’, highways ‘corn rows of stalled cars’. Overall, though, it’s a bleak new world indeed, and it seems that Buck has been out there for far too long. For about two-thirds of the book, zombies are a vague external menace, like rafts of poisonous jellyfish drifting the seas: safe enough if you can swim around them, but God help you if the tide changes. For Buck, most of the conflict and horror comes from his encounters with the human inhabitants of the wastelands, not with the afflicted. His mantra is ‘Kill it or let it go’, but we’re never quite sure which way he’ll jump.

When the zombies do make their appearance, their eerie behaviour raises more questions. Are they directed by some outside force? Do they share a hive mind? And what’s with that well-dressed Biter caged out in the compound? This is a vignette, and we might well not find out. As a final set-piece battle looms, we get the feeling that humanity is best left to the non-humans.

If you’re looking for an uplifting change of pace, it’s unlikely you’ll find it in the second book, The Reborn, by Brett J. Talley. This is a dystopian tale of a future America economically depressed, ravaged by war, and fundamentally changed due to one key revelation: reincarnation is real. Marcus Ryder is another veteran of foreign wars, a superannuated cop and reluctant recruit of The Shepherds, a shadowy ‘pre-crime’ squad. The Shepherds, he soon learns, are charged with the detection and elimination of violent reincarnated criminals (the Reborn) - in utero. Talley makes a frighteningly plausible case - if not for the science of reincarnation itself - for the inexorable logic of the totalitarian state which would endorse forcible abortion based on genetic testing. The Shepherds are the jackbooted enforcers of the law, but they don’t have it all their own way. Domestic resistance is growing, and out of the east a murderous cult is building pyramids of skulls to mark its way to Washington. As Marcus is drawn deeper into the conflict, his commitment to the new order will be sorely tested. A slow-starting but engaging apocalyptic ride. show less

I was a bit confused when I got to the end of Biters. I thought the Title was Biters—The Reborn, but then I saw that The Reborn is a second story. So I am only going to review Biters.
I was immediately drawn into this story as if I were watching it on my television alone on a Friday night. The protagonist begins the story with the emotional baggage of survivor’s guilt. He alone survived a zombie attack while his neighbors and family members were attacked and turned into zombies. Next, the show more author introduces a desperate group of people who have banded together out of fear and necessity to survive the zombie attacks on their stronghold in the middle of nowhere. Each character reveals the darkest part of humanity as they cling to the idea of a society where the toughest and most enterprising control the weak. The protagonist thinks he loves a woman who betrays him while the pitiful dog he adopts proves herself to be his most loyal ally. This post-apocalyptic zombie story is reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode with no happy ending for the hero and only a slim hope for his future survival. show less