Zombies Don't Surrender

I snagged Rusty Fischer's Zombies Don't Surrender as a LibraryThing Early Reviewers giveaway. I have this unending zombie obsession, and it's been going on since way before the current zombie craze, though I will say I am totally digging the availability of super awesome zombie magnets and t-shirts. Win.
Anywho, back to the matter at hand. So I received Zombies Don't Surrender and the publisher was awesome enough to also send me the first two books in the series. Which totally rocks. And I will say, each of the books was a fun read in itself. The problem that I have, that is pretty much a deal breaker for me, is that there is no continuity from one book to the next. The end of book one is described in book two completely different from show more how it actually happened. Then, the end of book two is all "grownup, wearing the uniform, dating the non-jerky guy" perfect and then book three starts out at, presumably, the same time period, but the main character is a bottom rung trainee with a jerkface boyfriend.

I was able to push aside the likable characters becoming way less likable and the ups and downs of zombie love, but seriously, I can't deal with the complete history rewrites and random set changes ("Sentinel City" goes from two stories (or more) in book two to a single story facility in book three, random).

As I was saying, each book was fine on its own. Zombies Don't Surrender starts out as kind of a downer. Our heroine is lonely, her boyfriend is being totally lame, and she's a zombie… and can't eat yummy human food any more. The book started out a little slow for me, I think I was still confused over the changes from the previous book, but once it became a "road" book, it got a bit more interesting. Zombies Don't Surrender felt gorier to me than the other books did. I don't know if it was because the descriptions of the violence were better or if it just struck me more. Other than our pain characters, the new characters that were introduced in this book seemed to fall flat. They're not particularly likable or endearing, even the neighbor/stalker who could have been the most awesome secondary character of all time… just kind of fizzled out. Would I read another book in the series? Probably. I am curious to see where Maddy's going to end up next… though first I'll have to read about where she's been since it seems to change from book to book. show less

A great ride, Zombies Don't Surrender is the story of likable teenage zombie Maddy, and portrays the plight of the lovelorn zombie girl as she tries to save the world from the deadly and evil "Zerker" zombie, even though she's been expelled, "Vanished" from polite zombie society. Sure, it's not likely to rate as great literature for the ages, but the characters were likeable, and it was good fun. I found it a quick and enjoyable read.

I hadn't read the other books in this series, but I definitely will now. I found Maddy to be a very likable character, and enjoyed her narration of the story. The plot of the story was good, although the confrontation with Val was a bit anti-climatic. I waited the entire book for her to appear and the scene at the school wasn't given the weight I thought it deserved. I also hope this is not the last book in the series, since Maddy's feelings for Dane and his for her seemed unresolved. I liked Lucy and would like to see her in another book!

I received this book as part of LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program.

I have mostly avoided the ‘zombie romance’ genre as I was unable to digest the concept of zombies as romantic figures. I thought this time maybe, why not give it a shot? I mean, I do like zombie stories and movies too, in a kill-them-dead-people kind of way, like World War-Z (THAT was one hell of a movie! I’m yet to read/listen to the book though).

A while ago, I saw (and read) Warm Bodies, also a Zombie romance story. I found it sort of cute actually. I would have given it four stars if not for the fact that the protagonist Zombie eats the lead girl’s boyfriend’s brains and gets all his memories (and hence falls in love with her), then kidnaps her and show more the girl (perfectly human) falls in love with him too – the Zombie who ate her boyfriend a couple of days ago. Except from this ‘little’ fact constantly poking at the inside of my skull, I did enjoy it quite a bit.

But unfortunately, I don’t think I can ever picture the dead/undead yellow-eyed Z-Creatures as some romantic characters. That being said, I did not like the concept of making brains (the zombie food) into brain nuggets, brain smoothie, and what not. I didn't care about the fictional post-apocalyptic world or the characters any more at the beginning than at the end. I am, in general, a sucker for all things dystopian. Just not this one. I found the book plain boring and lost interest pretty much before I even developed any.

Also, as in the previous book, Zombies Don't Forgive, there were a number of continuity errors which did not make sense. I found the protagonist Maddie to be generally unlikable. The narration wasn’t as bad though. All in all, I would recommend Zombies Don’t Surrender to those who are okay with the whole Zombie romance thing. If you can digest that, it can be an okay read for you, otherwise I don’t think so. show less

This book had an interesting view of Zombies. I liked how they were different types of Zombies some that were mindless and some that cared on like they were human. I think I would have gotten a lot more if I would have read the first books. I thought this book was worth reading and I may go back and read the others.

This is for the advanced review copy which I received. As with the previous book, Zombies Don't Forgive, there were a number of continuity errors which did not make sense. Ultimately the whole zombie hierarchal society concept just doesn't hold up very well. The ending battle was expected, but again fell short, and seemed to have been ended too neatly. Overall, after reading this and the previous 2 books, the series just wasn't very satisfying.

Def enjoyed this book. I usually read vampires and erotica books but I def like this book bc I couldn't stop reading it. I would def recommend it to my friends who are into this kinda books😄