A.R. Wise

Reading this book was like watching a horror version of the movie "Groundhog's Day". There was no plot that took you from point A to point B, instead it was round and round you go like being on a merry-go-round and just like that merry-go-round the book never went anywhere.
Good thing about the book is that there were very few grammatical errors.

This one gets personal

I like road movies. I like quiet clean but loaded surprises. This one was different. Horror has to have a personal edge for it to work. The story creates scenes of chaos, but always anchors them to a personal loss. Some of the scenes are of society breaking down, but the background theme remains a personal horror. There's a few surprises to keep the story unsettling, but even the few moments of acute terror turn into piling horror. Getting the next one soon.

I thoroughly enjoyed this fresh spin on the zombie apocalypse. Characters were funny and well rounded, plot was solid..execution overall great.

I wanted to like Deadlocked since I love zombie fiction. Unfortunately, I just couldn't do it. What you get in this book is a fast-paced story - too fast paced. The author falls easily into a trap common with 1st person narration. He tells instead of showing. The result is a narration that feels like stream of consciousness rather than a thought out progression. That style has its place but fails to deliver here. Two stars because there was real potential in the story line.

The book reads show more like a YA reader, however the language is wholly unsuitable. An irksome addition is the "Author's Notes" at the end of the book. Taking more time to read than the book itself and better written than the story, I might add, the notes just try too hard. I don't need to be convinced that a book is good. Some insight at the end of a novel is nice - Neil Gaiman does this very well - but laying out, point by point, why your story is unique and praiseworthy comes off as possibly pretentious and mostly desperate.

A.R. Wise has some other free works available, which I will try. I will not, however, be paying to continue this series. show less