The First Days: As the World Dies [Paperback]

Its so hard to find good, character-driven zombie stories which have the requisite amount of gore and have well-written female characters. This book is so close to being perfect it can almost touch it.

The opening scene is powerful and terrifying (especially to those of us who are parents) the premise and plot of the book are both excellent, there are some superb scenes which sent my adrenaline pulsing, dialogue is pretty good and most of the time I could imagine the characters as real people.

The problem is that damning 'most of the time'. There was a lot of repetition (of emotion in particular), often using very similar words. I would loved to have found out a little more about the characters previous lives and experiences and it seemed strange that they themselves did not link back to these in places where it would have made sense, even if it was just emotionally/flashback etc. These problems interrupted my reading of the book, at times I had to force myself to get past these awkward passages.

There are also a lot of typos (causalities for casualties for example), badly constructed sentences, overuse of reminiscence through 'she wondered' and 'she remembered' which should have been picked up by a credible editor before publication.

It also should have been twice the length because even with these problems its a pretty good zombie novel and while I know there is a sequel or two, I would love to have had this stage of the story extended further.

The many glowing reviews of this book persuaded me that it would be a great read. Though I don't like knocking new authors, I wish I'd paid more attention to the minority of dissenting voices and I hope to do some other prospective reader a favour with this review. I hope.

First of all, let me say I loved the opening scene - the child's fingers questing under the door, the mother trembling on the porch, thinking irrelevant thoughts, unable to equate this with her life. Masterly.

If only the rest of the work had lived up to it.

I wanted to like the story, and it had some truly exciting moments, but just as I was getting into the swing of a scene or a character, I'd stub my toe on amateurish writing - too many adverbs, sentences that tell us with a clunk what we should be able to infer ('Jenni sighed contentedly, obviously relaxing' -first of all, if you 'sigh contentedly', we can infer you're relaxed, thanks, and then, by the way, if I can point to another element of amateurish writing, 'obvious' to whom? From whose point of view is this scene? Unfocused head-hopping is not the route to good storytelling).

Then there's the flat-out typos and bad grammar and punctuation. Also the teeth-clenchingly irritating 'Gawd' thing and the childish, unconvincing Juan and Jenni love-hate relationship, which might have worked if there'd not been a sentence where it became apparent that we (or Jenni) are really supposed to believe she hates him. Or if they'd been characters from 'The Gilmore Girls'.

There's a sequence over pages 243-247 where almost every single movement of the characters is laid out for us - there are so many smiles (including sad, half and kind-of), winces, nods, frowns, sighs, fingertip-running, elbow-resting and food-shoving, that I almost threw the damn book across the room (angrily, sliding to my feet, but with a small, sad half-smile, of course). Micro-managed character-action does not add to character! It just gets in the way of story and treats the reader like an idiot who can't imagine those things for herself. If a character is running his knife along his throat, yes, that would be relevant in telling us something about him. Everything else is just dross that the author doesn't yet have the confidence to leave out.

Another bone I have to pick is the Lydia theme. If a character is haunted by grief, the writer has to find a way to present it in a way that's interesting to the reader, not just repeat how sad and angry and regretful Katie is, at every opportunity.

On the plus side, some of the dialogue is zippy and funny, and the action scenes are exciting. The writer obviously had great fun writing her book.

As I see from the other reviews, many readers are OK with bad writing if there is an exciting story and characters they can identify with - that's fine, but if you're not one of those lucky people, I would avoid this one. I love zombie novels and they're just as easy to write well as any other, if the author has the skill. Ms Frater, I'm afraid, needs to hone her craft a lot more before I would ever read any more of her work. I would suggest she studies Strunk's 'Elements of Style' til it's coming out of her ears.

I, who normally whiz through books at a pace I wish I could slow down, took months to finish 'The First Days/As the World Dies'. I wanted a great, zippy read, but what I got was a book I could not stop putting down.

I must review this to warn others about one of the worst books I can ever recall reading (apart from Fighting to survive - the follow up to this one)...So disappointed, I was so eager to read this book, but where can I begin?? Retired Israeli Sniper (60+ year old woman), Zombie Killah T-shirts, the abused wife scared of her own shadow turned into raving sex & killing machine, strong headed lesbian becoming ditzy swooning arm candy, token ethnic(mexican) guy, the good looking chislled chinned guy who turns the lesbian, good guys (almost) always prevailing, and for good measure throw in a couple of bad old redneck boys, so corny and dare I say so "American", I could go on and on.....Plot potentially excellent, characters and actual story shocking....