Autumn

It all happened in an instant. First, a pain in the mouth. Then the throat would swell and and bleed, and death followed within seconds. And it spread from person to person almost too quickly to be believed, leaving a handful of survivors surrounded by hundreds, perhaps thousands or millions, of the dead.

For the few survivors holding up inside the flimsy walls of the Whitchurch Community Center, the worst is far from over. After a few days, some of the dead begin to rise, ambling about, bumping into walls and other objects like flies against a window. Carl, Michael and Emma decide that the group would be better off away from the Center, away from such a large amount of dead and the recently re-awakened. Unable to convince others to join show more them, they set off in search of a more secure location, but slowly realize that no place may be safe as the re-awakened begin to show a violent awareness of those still living.

In the blink of an eye, "Autumn" turns the world as we know it inside out, creating a very dark and bleak story of survival, with a subtle twist to the zombie tale. Rather than passing the infection with slow-moving bites, allowing characters to prepare and to fight, this one spreads like wildfire doused with gallons of jet fuel. Everyone is caught unaware and unprepared. The too-quick devastation takes a mental toll on the characters which adds a new psychological twist to the survival story.

I like that each of the main characters is forced to deal with the sudden loss: Carl refuses to let go of the memories of his wife and young daughter; Michael realizes that he'll never again see his friends and co-workers; and Emma, tries not to deal with events by locking herself in her room and pulling the covers over her head, hoping it will all go away. They show human frailties and struggle to find the strength to continue, which for me made them more believable and realistic.

What also adds to "Autumn"'s creep factor are the re-awakened. At first, they act like newborns, blind and not completely aware of their surroundings, but as the story moves along, they begin to learn, to be attracted to sound and to motion. It's that seeming ability to learn that makes these particular re-awakened more dangerous than other versions of the undead.

"Autumn" is the perfect book to get your adrenaline pumping, forcing you to stay up late and read page after page because you need to see what happens. Highly recommended!! show less

In less than a day, 99% of the population died because of an unknown virus. The few survivors are shocked and gather together for safety in a community. Then some of the many corpses start to walk around. Most of the survivors start to panic and turn on each other, so Michael, Carl, and Emma decide to go off by themselves and find a safer place to stay. They find a secluded farm house in a rural area and opt to settle there for the time being. Then the walking corpses seem to be more aware and gather around people or things that make noise. The survivors don't know what to make of this new development, so they try to avoid the dead and make a new life for themselves. Then, they start to attack the survivors. Michael, Carl, and Emma show more realize the danger they are in. The walking dead keep coming in huge numbers and are attracted to the light from the house and every sound they make. Can they figure out a way to survive in this world full of corpses dead set on destroying them?

Autumn is a good, solid zombie book. The writing style and plot really drew me in from the very first pages. Others have complained that the pacing is too slow, but I disagree. The focus of the book isn't on the zombies, but the emotions and conflict between the human characters. It takes time to illustrate detailed characters, their different lives, and their connections with each other. This situation seemed much more plausible and realistic to me. The survivors are upset because practically everyone they know is dead and of course their minds aren't instantly going to go to zombie apocalypse. They are confused and don't really know what to do or why everything is happening. Emotions are running high, causing them to make unwise decisions and lash out at each other out of fear or anger. This is how people act in extreme situations. Michael, Carl, and Emma all have their own unique things to deal with and aren't perfect characters. They doubt themselves and agonize over what would be best to do. No one is confident in their course of action in this post-apocalyptic world. The survivors' actions made sense to me and illustrated what real people would do in a horrible situation.

This isn't your typical zombie book. There aren't gobs of blood and gore drenching every page, but there is definitely potential for more in the next book. I really enjoyed the quiet, slow burn of the book. It is reminiscent of John Ajvide Lindqvist's Handling the Undead. I would recommend this to zombie fans that don't mind a more casual pace and a more cerebral approach to the zombie genre. I can't wait until the next book comes out. show less

Autumn - David Moody *****

Although I have never really been a huge fan of the zombie/b movie type of book, I do like to dip into one now and again. The last I read was ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and thought it a really awful read. But when looking through a second hand book store I came across ‘Autumn’ and thought I would give it a try. Looking at the other reviews this seems to be very much a love it or hate it book with many ratings from the extremes of both sides. I suppose that it will depend what you are expecting to get from the read. If you approach it wanting some gritty drama or in depth plot then you will probably be disappointed, but if you are looking for some escapism into a cataclysmic world full of death and gore show more you will love it.

So what’s it about?
A deadly virus has struck the USA (maybe the world) that causes death within a few minutes. The unlucky individual has a very gory end that involves plenty of blood and pain. All across the country there are homes, work places and public areas where people are dropping like flies. Strangely though, there does seem to be the odd few that are immune to the disease. These survivors are spread far and wide and as they wander through the decimated landscape, start to gel together in groups. Whilst trying to decide what their next step should be an odd thing happens, some of the corpses begin to move; at first wandering aimlessly but with each passing day they seem to be getting more self aware and through the sheer numbers pose a threat. A decision needs to be made, do they stay holed up in a potential ‘safe’ house or should they make a break for open country where hopefully the undead will be less in number. But more importantly, what would you do?

Although described as a Zombie novel, this really does the book an injustice; it is as much about survival and the different ways in which people cope with a changing world (and undead walking around every corner). I can’t remember even seeing the word zombie except on the cover, so if you are fed up with the seemingly daft theme of ‘dead people trying to eat the living’ storyline, then Autumn offers something different.

I absolutely loved this book, the speech at times was a little wooden, but the writing was short, sharp and to the point. The atmosphere really does build and actually gets quite creepy at times. I cared what happened to the characters and found myself rooting for them, more than I usually do when reading a book, so much so that I went straight out and ordered the next books in the series. show less

It’s been awhile since I’ve enjoyed a zombie book so I was quite happy to curl up with Autumn by David Moody and get lost in a world of disease and walking dead. This book definitely had the right amount of creepy for me. At first 99 percent of the population drops dead within 24 hours and while a small amount of survivors huddle together in shock and grief, they come to the realization that things are definitely going to get worse as after a few days the corpses become reanimated. At first slow and witless, as time goes by, they appear to regain many of their basic instincts along with a hatred of the living. The bright side for the living is that the creatures are continuing to decompose and eventually they should disintegrate.

I show more enjoyed this dark story but I was a little disappointed with the ending as everything was left up in the air but I will be continuing on with the series in order to see how the author resolves this bleak dystopian tale. show less

Have been a fan of Moody's since first reading Hater, and was very excited to see the first part of the Autumn series being finally released here in the States. And Moody did not disappoint. This is a zombie novel, without ever even saying the word. Yet Moody does a superb job with the staging of his story. The undead don't change in nano seconds like in most stories/movies. Moody handles the change in degrees, first death, then rebirth, then slowly regaining senes to build into the inevitable. The way Moody presents all this very slowly over the span of weeks ratchets up the suspense. He lulls the survivors (and the reader) into a false sense of semi security, making the final chapters that much more intense. I really hope that this show more leads to the rest of the series being published as well, because this is just great writing. show less

Zombies are one group of supernatural/unnatural beings I love to read about, next to (terrifying) vampires and werewolves. I had read online that Autumn is a very good zombie series, it just took me a while to find it in store (I detest ordering online).
One day, in England (but probably everywhere in the world), people get sick and die within minutes. The disease spreads extremely quickly. We read about this, viewed through the eyes of a few survivors who seem to be immune. Their horror starts with just about everybody around them dropping dead (in the streets, behind the wheel of a moving car) and resources failing (power outage, no running water). But then, after a few days, things get a lot worse.
I really liked that the people in the show more book are as clueless about what is happening as we are. They find out and react at the same moment as we, the readers, do. They have to deal with their emotions and try to survive the best they can. The zombies in this book aren’t completely similar to the archetype zombie, but because the story doesn’t really end with a solution and only about a week or two have passed, who knows where this series is going. A very good, intense zombie book, four out of five stars. show less

Posted in October 2010 to my Livejournal, review of both Autumn and Hater by David Moody:

Both of these books (Autumn, and Hater) were previously offered as self-published online downloads. Then Hater got picked up by an actual publisher and did really well, so now Autumn, one of Moody's earliest works, is being published as well. I had to read Autumn for professional review, and I was excited to do so, for I love zombies (fictional zombies, of course -- real zombies are another thing entirely. I hate to admit it, but I would be dead within the first few hours of any zombie apocalypse, because I'm just not all that quick of mind or action). My excitement over reading Autumn lasted about five pages and quickly turned to real pain. On the show more other hand, Hater had been on my to-read list for a while and had gotten great reviews -- a couple of stars in review journals I trust, even -- but I couldn't reconcile the praise it got with how terribly bad Autumn was. I figured, Moody must have drastically improved as a writer somewhere between those two novels, so I decided to give him a shot and read his more recent book (recent as "in the order written", not "in the order published").

And yes, Hater is a much better book than Autumn, but not so good that I will read the rest of the series. Not so good, in fact, that I didn't skim over certain sections when they began to get repetitive, or skim over the ending, when I was already so far ahead of the plot that I could just skip a couple tedious pages and land where I expected to be. But it is has a lot going for it as a mindless zombie thriller (it has lots of gore; it's very visual; it sets up a thick sense of dread hanging over the main character; and it's fast-paced).

In Autumn, we are stuck with following a small band of extremely dull people as they hole up in a farmhouse and have endless discussion about what they should do next. (Hint: not much.) The zombies, even when they finally become mobile and violent, are not much of a threat and are not really scary. In Hater, we follow one person in particular -- Danny -- as he witnesses his life slowly change from a rational one in which he knows his place to one filled with violence, paranoia, and government cover-ups. Danny is your typical office drudge who dislikes his work, regrets the direction his life is going (nowhere), and loves but is simultaneously resentful of his wife and kids. Because of that, is he much easier to relate to than the cardboard people we get in Autumn, and while he never became someone I liked, he did earn my sympathy and my interest. His voice was also distinctive -- Hater is narrated in first person, present tense, which gives it a very effective immediacy. Reading it is effortless and fast.

Moody does a lot of the same things in Autumn and Hater, but he does them better in Hater. Mostly. In both books, he shows the effects of the virus on different people, one in each chapter. In Autumn, we get several short chapters in a row in which a new character is shocked and horrified when everybody drops dead around him or her. By the fourth time, you're like, yeah, I get what's going on, I get the point, can we move on now? He set the same scene over and over and over without really telling us anything. It's a technique that would work well in a movie, when you can do it in a shocking ten-minute montage or something, but not in a book. It didn't help that, aside from location, each of these scenes is a mirror of the rest, and none of the "characters" turned out to be anybody. In Hater, Moody does the same thing, only by this time he's learned to space out these "discovery" chapters, each one appearing at the beginning of a new section of the novel. They still get repetitive (yeah, character goes crazy and violently kills someone nearby, I get it) but at least they don't happen all at once. For some readers, it could lead to an increasing sense of tension, as we wait for this to happen to our main character, Danny. You know the violence has to directly affect him at some point, so it definitely sets the mood. For me, though, I started skipping over them about halfway through the book, because even though the gore was excellent, they distracted from Danny's story, which was the only story I was interested in. I think Moody should have quit them by the middle of the book, when they were no longer revealing anything new about how the virus works.

Hater would make a good movie. So might Autumn. (Good thing, right, since they've both been optioned.) The premise of both books isn't terribly original but they fit well within the "virus" zombie genre and I think as movies they might actually be scary. Hater also has a suffocating sense of paranoia, of not really knowing what's going on but knowing there's something larger out there at work, that Moody pulls off pretty successfully. Things go to hell slowly, with just the right amount of paranoia taking hold and just the right amount of worry that the paranoia is more of a problem than the reality of the violent attacks. I was able to look past the mediocre clunky writing in Hater because of being so immersed in Danny's head and because of the relentless pacing. (The only thing relentless in Autumn is the boredom.)

So, though I probably won't read any more of Moody's books, I will go see the movies, and I will probably enjoy them. show less