The Remaining

Good take on the zombie apocalypse. The Remaining series follows a soldier tasked with rebuilding civilization after a catastrophic event. I was a little worried before starting that it was going to be a military action book more than a survivors tale of the zombie apocalypse, but I was pleasantly surprised. When I read ZA books, I'm not interested in blood and gore or really gross zombie encounters and I'm not interested in hearing about main characters that are bad ass and overnight learn how to kill anything that gets in their way while leading hundreds of people to safety single handedly. I prefer realistic tales (as realistic as ZA novels can be) with groups of people who are trying to survivor after a world altering event when show more they have no idea how to get by in the new world and must learn day by day. This series is right up my alley.

It has plenty of characters that are easy to become invested in and it has aggravating situations that crop up that are intense while not being outrageous. The focus of the story isn't blood and gore or military style action, but the survivors and their daily struggles to make it through to the next sunrise. If ZA is your thing because of the tales of survivors, this is a good series to sink your teeth into. show less

The Remaining is a great zombie book. Originally self-published in 2012, it quickly became an internet bestseller before being picked up by Orbit, and there’s a damn good reason for that. By now you’ve probably seen a lot of the positive reviews it has garnered, though I’m willing to bet few of them have praised this story for being terribly original. But does that make this a bad book? Heck no. In fact, I would argue that its devotion to the classic zombie survival-horror tradition is a massive part of the appeal.

The Walking Dead fans, this one would be right up your alley. No joke. The “zombies” in this book might not be the traditional mindless shambling hordes we’re used to seeing – the victims of the FURY plague are show more still capable of talking and strategizing up to a point before the virus degrades their brains (which makes them even more terrifying, if you ask me) – but the overall spirit and style of the narrative is still the same. It’s not out to knock you off your feet with any new or unusual or experimental ideas, but if its goal is to provide a fast-moving, action-packed and entertaining zombie story then I must say it has succeeded rather swimmingly.

Here’s what you basically need to know: the main character of The Remaining is a US Army captain named Lee Harden, who as part of a secret government program is sequestered in his bunker after the sudden outbreak of a new deadly and infectious virus. It’s not the first time this has happened. Lee and about four dozen other soldiers like him (one for every state) are placed in their bunkers every time the country experiences an emergency of national crisis. If the government falls, their job is to come out after the bunker, take stock of the situation and try to gather survivors in order to rebuild. But things in the past have never gone so far or gotten this bad before. When the lockdown period passes without an all-clear or any further instructions from his superiors, Lee emerges from the bunker and prepares to begin his mission.

As a character, Lee took a while to grow on me – but the important thing is that he did, and I think the moment came when I was finally able to appreciate his faults. Admittedly, the few chapters really tried my patience; that whole period in lockdown pretty much featured Lee being in denial and going back and forth between his decisions and second guessing his instructions. And man, those long and wearying paragraphs about his guns! As the deadline came and went I kept tapping my foot waiting for him to stop describing the contents of his impressive arsenal, get his waffling butt out there and actually put all that stuff to good use on some hapless Infected.

Then I realized I was probably being too harsh on him. Dude is stuck in a bunker. Not knowing what’s going on because he’s cut off from all communication. No human interaction at all because it’s just him and his dog. If the world outside has indeed gone to hell in a hand basket, he’s probably also scared to death of the responsibility waiting for him on the other side of that tunnel. So maybe I was being a tad unfair to poor Lee. And really, what a shame it would have been if he was just another archetypal action hero, full of empty bravado rushing out headfirst to save the world. Lee is more realistic this way, even though if he does end up doing some pretty dumb things. But who wouldn’t make some wrong choices in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, right? Amidst his questionable decisions, he makes some pretty brutal ones as well. The guy has a good heart, but is sure as hell also capable of showing no mercy to those who don’t deserve it. I love that.

Bottom line, if you’re a fan of type of zombie apocalypse survival movies that Hollywood does so well, this is that in book form. After a relatively sedate start, the novel picks up and will not slow down, with always some kind of disaster or new setback waiting around the corner for the characters to overcome. No other bells and whistles or fancy-schmancy embellishments, just pure zombie fiction fun. show less

Lee is part of a secret government project to be deployed should the worst happen. Whatever that worst is. Whenever a crisis hits the US, he and his fellows go to ground in their bunkers to weather the storm and emerge in the aftermath

There have been many drills, many false alarms and Lee didn’t think much of the latest alert – a plague spreading that turned people violent and near mindless. No doubt it would be resolved like many before

And then the time stretched – and stretched. This is not a drill. Society has fallen, the US is devastated and it’s Lee’s job to pick up the pieces.

I love this concept, it’s a great new spin on an old concept. We’ve seem dystopian, post-apocalyptic worlds. We’ve seen any number of show more survivors struggling to live and learn in the new world they’re presented in. We’ve seen them make the hard choices, having to set their moral lines, we’ve seen them be totally unprepared.

But this? Someone who has been prepared for exactly this scenario. Someone who has the supplies and skills for a zombie apocalypse and is ready to take it on. It sounds like it would make for a simpler story – after all, the struggle to survive becomes so much easier. Which is true – but it’s a whole different dynamic – because Lee has a mission. In other books the survivors battle hard choices on moral lines, whether to save or trust other people and focus on living. Lee can’t do that – he can’t decide not to save people, he can’t just focus on his own survival. His job is to put the country back together. He has been prepared and supplied to restore order and civilisation – focusing on daily survival alone cannot be his priority. Not reaching out to people not taking the risk in trusting people, not saving people are all things he cannot do – not unless he’s willing to abandon his mission entirely. It’s a fascinating new dynamic and makes for a very fresh story against a very familiar background.

We still have a lot of the standard themes of a zombie apocalypse – watching friends and loved ones becoming monsters, having to make the decision to put them down, facing the slow degradation of someone you know slowly deteriorating, roving bands of marauders and gangs exploiting the break down of order to take whatever they want – and they’re all really well done. But Lee’s mission colours everything and adds a new angle to all of these well portrayed and familiar themes.

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I will start by mentioning the thing that bothered me the most about this book: it just stops. Reading along and... suddenly it is over. There was no real indication that there was an end coming up. Doesn't mean that it was not a logical place to stop, just that there was no real build up and denoument that lead me to think the end of the book was coming.

Other than that, it was a reasonably well-written zombie novel. Yes, it works with the standard clichés and the characters are pretty run-of-the-mill. But there is some satisfying vigilante action, some zombie action, and some militant faction action.

What more do you want from a short and quick read? It ain't literature folks, it's a zombie book. And a relatively well written one for show more that. I will read more in the series. show less

I don't use star ratings, so please read my review!

(Description nicked from B&N.com.)

“In a steel-and-lead-encased bunker 20 feet below the basement level of his house, a soldier waits for his final orders. On the surface, a plague ravages the planet, infecting over 90% of the populace. The bacterium burrows through the brain, destroying all signs of humanity and leaving behind little more than base, prehistoric instincts. The infected turn into hyper-aggressive predators, with an insatiable desire to kill and feed. Some day soon, the soldier will have to open the hatch to his bunker, and step out into this new wasteland, to complete his mission: SUBVENIRE REFECTUS. TO RESCUE AND REBUILD.”

Okay, the situation with this book is kind of show more interesting. If you have an e-reader, you can get this book right now, but if you want print, you have to wait until May. In fact, you can download the first four books by this author right now, but print is not to be found. Not yet, anyway. So, if you’re a print person, should you grab this when it finally shows up?

Well, that’s a hard call for me to make. The answer is mostly a “yes”. There’s no shortage of action in this novel. Zombies are rampaging across the country. Hordes of them converge on our intrepid hero, Lee Hardin, who often has minimal weaponry and little more than his brains to help him through dangerous situations. He perseveres in his mission to rebuild society one little group of people at a time, valiantly braving danger to save the uninfected.

If you’re thinking that this sounds a little campy, you’d be right. This is not a novel in which things are going to surprise you. If you’ve seen a B-grade horror flick—or even a Saturday-afternoon action movie—you can see where a lot of this is going to go. But, as everyone knows, sometimes those kinds of movies (or books) can be just what you want. Not every story has to challenge and enlighten in order to entertain.

On the other hand, by following some of the tropes, Molles has perhaps unintentionally set up Hardin as something of a dunderhead. He makes mistakes that even I, inexperienced at combat as I am, know are things that you really shouldn’t do. There are also some elements that are so typical that I had to shake my head. On the first page, not only do we meet Hardin, we meet his dog Tango. The minute I saw that dog, I thought “Poor puppy, you’re just here to die, aren’t you?” I won’t confirm if that’s the case or not, but you can probably read between the lines of this review and figure it out for yourself.

I enjoyed The Remaining for what it was: a quick, breezy action story, heavy on fighting and terribly injured bodies wandering around, light on any plot beyond “Run around and try to survive”. I’m not sure if I’m going to go on to the next book or not, but it’s pretty inexpensive for an e-book, so I may just give it a try.

This review originally appeared on Owlcat Mountain on February 14, 2014. show less

Captain Lee Harden is waiting in a bunker with his faithful dog, not for the first time. Usually, he waits for a few weeks or so, receives a call and goes on with his life. This time, the call doesn't come. He figures it might be a mistake, so he waits and still nothing. Finally, he watches the required video that tells him of a pandemic of epic proportions. His mission is to save who he can, restore order, and basically restart civilization, a tall order for one person. Fortunately, there are other people in bunkers across the US as a contigency with the same commands, but can they combat the diseased and unhinged people with any success?

Lee Harden is ex-military and without family. He figures his special assignment is nice for extra show more money worth going a little stir crazy every once in a while. When the time comes when his contact can no longer respond, he goes through a period of denial. Lee opts to drink and play video games to cope with the knowledge that something horrible wrong happened to the world. Once he pulls himself together, he breaks protocal to investigate his house, leaving his bunker earlier than planned. He encounters both diseased people and deranged humans. At first, he sees the infected as needing a doctor instead of a bullet in the head, but he has to protect himself from their attacks. He has much less sympathy for people taking advantage of lawlessness by shooting the innocent for fun. His decisions may to always be right, but he tries his hardest to make moral decisions, save those who need help, and punish the ones doing harm.

The zombies in the story are caused by a bacteria called FURY, the cause of major plagues throughout human history. The disease goes through 4 stages. First, asymtomatic stage can last 24 to 48 hours and be very contagious. Second, the prodromal stage is marked by fever, salivation, extreme hunger and thirst, insomnia, and loss of fine motor skills. Next, the illness stage holds loss of speech and cognition, hallucinations, loss of sensation, hyperaggression, uncontrollable screaming and yelling, and insatiable appetite. The late illness stage lowers reaction time, unsteadies the gait, and may lead to blindness. The disease essentially eats the inessential parts of the brain so only the aggression, hunger, and thirst are left of the person. Some can still speak, but usually repeat words over and over while attacking unpredictably. These are closer to the 28 Days Later rage zombies and I'm curious to see if these ones will deteriorate over time in later books.

The Remaining is an exciting book that really takes off when he leaves the bunker. It took a little too long to get there and in the dragging parts, I thought of ways to rephrase some sentences to make them sound better. The infodump of the zombie disease was a little jumbled for me, but once the action commenced, the writing improved. Other than these minor problems, I am eager to continue the series. So far, there are 6 books and I want to know what happens, how larger swaths of the US are handling the disease, and how time affects the zombies. show less

A frightfully entertaining post-apocalyptic "zombies versus survivors" scenario that's a continuous stream of action from start to finish. Nothing too difficult to digest, nothing too predictable, with just the right amount of military backdrop to keep it interesting. This is by no means Pulitzer prize award winning writing, but it is damn good fun and completely worth the price of admission.