Bricks of the Dead

Z-Boat has to be classified as a true post-apocalyptic novel. In the distant future, we are faced with a world that has crumbled not by the undead, but by overpopulation and power shifts amongst governments. America is basically a third-world country while Russia, Israel, North Korea are now the super powers.

Drinkable water is a scarce resource, putting it at the top of the world’s lengthy list of problems. Water from the moon’s frozen areas has found its way into Earth homes. Despite some biologically unknown factors, it is still safer than what’s financially available to most. Food is grossly overproduced; being pumped with chemicals has robbed it of both its taste and nutritional value. Rather than starve its still consumed.

With the ever-worsening Earth conditions, deep-sea exploration for alternative resources has become the only hope for humanity, and highly lucrative. Exploration is also host to unpredictable problems, since so much of the world’s oceans have never been explored due to the depth.

While governments have changed their status in the word, the ocean is an international resource where companies or even individuals owning submarines accept bids for various jobs in the depths. In this case the captain of the submarine Betty Loo has accepted a bid to answer a deep-water S.O.S call from another sub that has been pinging for two months.

The job is shrouded in mystery until the ship reaches its destination; even the captain doesn’t know the full purpose. In fact, the only reason the captain accepted the job is because the payout was so high he couldn’t refuse.  Part of the contract from the anonymous government requires the Betty Loo take on additional crew members for the mission. With half the crew being outsiders, the book becomes a mystery thriller novel before transitioning into a horror novel again.

I found the ground work, especially the setting, for this book refreshing; a zombie novel taking place in the deep seas on a submarine is can of awesome waiting to be popped open. The New York setting has been done again and again – admittedly by some pretty incredible books – and I wish more stories would move away from there. The world is a pretty big canvas, after all. It’s getting to the point where location is the first thing I look for in a new book.

After Z-boat gets rolling with an incredible setting and a fantastic premise, we quickly hit the biggest weakness of the book: getting bogged down in too much detail. While I appreciate the importance of character development, I felt it was overdone and went into far too much explanation of the characters without the story advancing. There was a few moments in the book where so much detail came into play I kept worrying I had missed something. Z-Boat developed its characters best once the flood of detail stopped and the story progressed.

Despite the slowdown, Z-Boat managed to recapture my attention and then some. In fact, I would say the book ended up being great; it even forced me to stay up way too late as I finished it. In the end,  I was able to feel the pressure of the sub and smell the vileness of what happened inside once they connected to the downed vessel.

This isn’t a gun toting zombie book, especially since the zombies don’t play a significant role for half of it. If you think about it, most books are like that where zombies aren’t playing the heaviest role. When the zombies do come into the story in the last half, you’ll find a claustrophobic horror novel that utilizes the hell out of its inescapable environment. As I have said in other reviews, if you’re into the apocalypse genre and only looking for action, you’ll find plenty of it but you will get bored very fast. This genre has so much to offer, and I love having so many styles to enjoy.

I can assure you that anyone feeling like the story lacked its quota of gore and violence in the first half will be more than satisfied in the last half. Stick with it.

Suzanne Robb’s greatest asset as a writer seems to be a vast imagination that made Z-Boat stand apart from the sameness that so many zombie books can be built on. While stated above it did have a section that I felt was too slowed down it turned into a really great book.  This is book one a series and I am certainly looking forward to book two.

Grade: B