Day by Day Armageddon [Paperback]

A zombie book and I loved it, no suprise there!

This for me was a zombie story with a difference. It is a day by day account of a Navy officer from just before the epidermic hits and daily (sometimes more than one entry per day) journal entries. Normally it is all kill kill kill to keep you hooked and get your imagination going but not so with this book.

You follow his very early methods of self preservation and survival to meeting other survivers and bonding and struggling to stay together and survive a world of horror.

The book is at a great pace, riveting and keeps you guessing to what is going to happen next. Everytime he ventures out will he be next to die? I feel I should elaborate more but to be honest it is so good you just need to grab a copy for yourself.

There is also a guarentee of a follow up book so watch this space, 5/5 for me.

I was really looking forward to reading Day By Day Armageddon - the whole concept of a survivor keeping a journal and updating it daily whilst trying to endure a zombie outbreak sounded very interesting. It was interesting, but not without a lot of waffling and a few contradicting events in the book that didn't make sense.

The book is written, as mentioned before, in journal format, where the survivor's log begins on January the 1st, with the first few weeks of entries being about the uprise and outbreak of the epidemic; it's beginnings in China, how it reaches the USA, and how the protagonist worries about what this all means.

I found that the fact that this story was written in journal format did itself no justice at many times; most journal entries are written on evenings or nights after an event has happened, yet the event is told in such a finely detailed recollection, you get the sense you are basically reading a novel. Whilst the natural journey entries themselves can be interesting, such as brainstorming how to escape, or thinking about what to do the next day, the way the recollections are given is a little too detailed and well structured for a journal entry. For me, this took away the sense of the entries at times, and turned the story into a normal zombie novel.

What the novel does well is give a great sense of progression and journey - as our protagnist moves from place to place, meeting different people, (or creatures) the reader can easily empathise and understand the position of the character thanks to the detailed journal entries. While I credit the journal system here, I do wonder whether this plot would have done better as a novel instead of a diary.

A problem I had with this book was the lack of description of characters along the way - all we know about the main character is that he is a trained soldier of some variety whom lives alone. That's it. No backstory, no real description of people he meets along the way, no information on their personalities and very few on their appearance; it contradicts what the book does so well in putting the reader in the protagonists position - then taking away this sensation by not giving the readers something or someone to associate the characters with.

The book is paced well and does a good job of keep the dating and timing of the journal entries believable and realistic. A great sense of urgency is also created and the atmosphere is chilling and haunting. The book is at it's best when the journal entries are written in a present tense, giving the reader a sense that anything could happen, adding to the fear factor of the book. But again, coming back to the diary format of the story, the fact that most entries have to tell tales of previous happenings, it loses it's great atmosphere and by half way through the book the reader feels they will know the outcome of all the entries.

Previous reviews have mentioned how the reader needs a firm understanding of military equipment and procedures; I didn't find this to be true. As long as you can figure out that an M16 carbine is a gun, and NVG's are night vision goggles, you should be fine.

Moving onto some other positives in the book, the fact that the protagonist is in the army is an interesting take on the usual normal civilian being the star character, whom often goes on to meet a group of other surivors who get their hands on a variety of weapons and unleash hell upon the undead; - this is not the case in Day By Day Armageddon. The book does a realistic job, (as much as it can seeing as this is a tale of undead) making things seem close to home.

Overall, the book was quite good - interesting format, great sense of adventure and progression and a realistic atmosphere. However, the book lacked in character(s) and could have done better in a novel format due to the style of some entries.

Recommended for zombie fans, horror fans; but don't expect anything revoloutionary.

This book has a certain charm as far as zombie novels go but has a few serious flaws. For starters the main character is that traditional survivalist loner so beloved of horror books, name a skill and the guy has it, name a weapon and he can use it, name a vehicle and he can drive/fly it to the point it would seem air force pilot training includes a section of driving tanks given the main characters escape in one. He has no real relationships or friends thus freeing up time from that messy human drama for info dumps on weapons and aircraft. Ok if you like that kind of thing I guess.

Some odd attitudes also show up through the novel and its sequel, how women are incapable of looking after themselves, should be protected and trusted with weapons only under the most dire of circumstances. And no a zombie apocalypse doesn't count as bad enough, when the lead character decides to reduce the parties firepower by 50% by having the women unarmed no one calls him on it. Then there are there is the aside about the lack of guns in Europe and how quickly England is over-run because no one is armed, except by the time the lead smugly thinks this the US government was launching nuclear strikes against its own cities. I guess the right to bear arms doesn't help after all.