Frank Tayell

The only thing Tayell can't do is catchy titles. Oh, and cover design. Besides that, this is easily one of the better apocalypse I've read in years (mentally reviews prior reads...). Yep, that's true. It's too bad the cover design is so pulpy, because this is pretty much the opposite type of story: the diary of an intelligent but perhaps unimaginative person as civilization begins to implode.

Bartholomew--Bill, to his friends--is at home recovering from a broken leg as he watches the London show more evacuation. Jennifer, Bill's closest friend, former business partner, and rising star in the London government has told him to stay put until she can send a car for him. She's the one that broke the news of what appears to be an attack of the living dead when he awakened in the hospital, and told him to stay home instead of evacuate. What follows is Bill's gradual realization that he will have to save himself.

"I made another assumption about our situation, one that’s only just starting to dawn on me. I assumed that one day, one day soon, that these things outside, undead, zombies, infected, whatever, that one day They would die, and that we could just take back our island. What if we have to fight for it?"

I think it's closest analogy in stories would be [b:I Am Legend|40940649|I Am Legend|Richard Matheson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1532484265s/40940649.jpg|19273256], [b:Zone One|10365343|Zone One|Colson Whitehead|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327888785s/10365343.jpg|15268500] or perhaps [b:The Day of the Triffids|530965|The Day of the Triffids|John Wyndham|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320530145s/530965.jpg|188517], particularly in the sense that this is one person's journey and evolution of understanding about himself and about the crisis. Bill has a likeable, vaguely self-depreciating voice that was engrossing. At first, he is an intelligent Everyman, albeit with insider information, with a trust in government and society that is admirable, even if a little naive. He is a modern white-collar professional and city dweller, suddenly made aware of the inadequacies of his skill sets. Some reviewers note that he felt 'whiny,' which is a description that surprised me. Occasionally little despairing, perhaps, and at war with himself over what to be done next. Like Hamlet, he is indecisive over his course of action, his broken leg preventing him from easy maneuverability.

"I purposefully only did a rough headcount. I knew I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to know exactly how bad my situation was."

One aspect that sets Tayell apart as a writer is that this is free of the sexist trappings. One reviewer even notes that she thought the narrator was a woman for much of the story. Perhaps that will change as the apocalypse progresses and issues such as survival and continuation of society come into play, but I really enjoyed the gender-free approach. I also appreciated the seemingly slow dissolution of society, although if one keeps strict track of days, the breakdown still works out to be quite fast. There questions Bill faces are quite real, quite similar to the range of responses for a hurricane, for instance. Should I shelter in place? What will it take? Should I evacuate? How to plan beyond the next few days? I had noted in a recent review of the EMP series how fast society broke down into looting/rioting/burning, and appreciated that Tayell didn't make that mistake.

"Out of all the job descriptions I’ve ever had, I think looter sounds the best. It’s more proactive than survivor."

The writing is exceptional for what appears to be a first book. In fact, I'll note that I judged this on a mass-published scale; there were no instance of the awkward phrasing or contrived dialogue that I associate with a beginning writer. There was a nice balance of humor, description and introspection in the narrative--this was definitely not a young-adult level read. Flashbacks were well integrated. If there were shortcomings, it is perhaps an ending that feels a bit rushed, and two over-contrived bits in terms of plot development. Bill has access to someone with a surprisingly wide information base, and that also feels a bit over-convenient, but I think that will play a more significant role in the following books. On the whole, however, this was an admirable apocalypse tale, and one deserving of far greater attention. On to the next.


Shoutout to John for his review on the fourth book, pointing the way towards this series. show less

A terrific story told through the diary of a survivor. Though this is a zombie novel, they are truly not the focus of the story; there is no gore to speak of, no terrifying scenes of carnage... Just one man's journey as he valiantly tries to survive after the evacuation, after being abandoned to his own device.

In a sense, this novel is a good example of one of life's lessons : those who can adapt may be able to survive. Despite a broken leg and They, the undead, who walk the streets Bill show more succeeds in surviving by not only adapting himself but through observation of the "enemy" and if I may say so, he does a spiffy job of it.

It is a roller-coster of a ride until the end, that dreadful end where a bigger horror than the undead is finally revealed.

I'm not a big fan of the genre. In all honesty, zombies scare me like nothing else but this novel is so superbly written and in such a way that though there are zombies, one can not help but want to follow Bill's journey to wherever it will lead him...

Truly a great novel. show less

Could you keep hold of your humanity when trying to survive in a nightmarish reality?

I think that's one of the subjects in this second installment of Tayell's Surviving the Evacuation. It always astounds me that humans can do horrific things, sometimes more terrifying than the walking horrors the characters are constantly confronted with, while comforting themselves by saying that they need to survive at whatever cost and if that means killing and/or abandoning people to their own device show more while knowing they have quasi no chances of surviving. Naturally, it is easy for a reader to say that they would never act thusly. It is, after all, merely a novel... but it still raises the question.

Like the first novel, this one is a just as enthralling. unnerving and suspenseful. The action is also more fast-paced. The way the world is described, it seems impossible to actually live, to go beyond merely surviving. The way the evacuees were treated... there's no word to actually describe the horror and the sheer inhumanity. All of this creates a story that kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end and what a ending it was. Yowza!

Little by little, the event leading to the outbreak is revealed and it is chilling... show less

It would be years before I would connect an Extra Special Vacation Episode of Happy Days with the phenomenon known as 'jumping the shark.'


Actual video of this is viewable on my blog at https://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2018/08/29/surviving-the-evacuation-book-three-f...

Alas; for me, the shark was well and truly jumped in book three of the 'Surviving the Evacuation' series. Book one was about Bill coming to terms with the changes in the world and working out how he could survive. Book two was show more about discovering other people, throwing in a political wrinkle about how zombies came about. In this, book three, Bill and his tiny band of survivors head toward the coast, following rumors of a large group surviving on an island. They eventually reach a half-way house and discover far more about international apocalypse politics than anyone wanted to know.

The plot continues to be filled with odd plot points--thank you very much; I'm aware I'm talking about a zombie book--that result in deux ex machina solutions. In the midst of plain ol' survival issues, Bill decides discovering if he is a 'carrier' of the virus is an important issue. Oh, and maybe we can create a vaccine out of his immune status if he isn't. As if mere survival wasn't enough, the undead have started to gather into hordes, like wildebeest in the savannah. The discover that competition over nuclear submarines is still a thing. But helpfully, Sholto, Bill's brother, appears to have been trained by Jason Bourne. There's more, of course, but these are the kind of plot points that move an apocalypse book past the exploration of what survival means into a bizarre kind of war movie. Can you even have international politics when we don't know if other nations survived?

Everything that inspired curiosity and appreciation in Book One was well and truly gone by the end of this one. Perhaps I am wrong, and perhaps Bill is essentially the same person from book one, trusting in his childhood friend and responding with remarkable naivete to his situations, hoping for the best. But now having survived in the wider world with months of the zombie apocalypse under his belt, he displays no further planning, analysis, or, as it's euphemistically called, 'situational awareness.' Far from the Girl Scout mentality he first displayed, he waits until he's in a fight before realizing his knife is ineffective: "The weight was too much, the balance wrong. Without the two fingers from my left hand I couldn’t handle the weapon properly." This was the same person that made his own spear, practicing with it until it became relatively safe. But somehow, Bill pretends he's learned his lesson, if only it wasn't repeated ad nauseum 75% of the way into the story:

"What I said next was cruel, but it was necessary. I was starting to get a measure of this place, and it was dawning on me that I’d made a big mistake going there so unprepared."

I found myself outlining passages, marking a 'TSTL' more than once. I ended up setting the book down for some time and might have left it for good if it weren't for that annoyingly completionist drive I sometimes have.

The first book in the series was fabulous, an 'I Am Legend' type story that captures all the complexities end-of-the-world stories are capable of exploring. The last two books, however, have been steadily sinking. Still, I'd recommend the first book, with the caveat of stopping after. Yes, I know it's hard. Yes, I know there are more stories/episodes/seasons. Yes, Happy Days continued. Just Don't Do It. Save yourself the shark experience, and treasure a perfect memory instead.

One-and-a-half sharks, rounding up because I finished. show less