Bryan Hall's Reviews > Dying Days

I admit that I go into any zombie story with some measure of trepidation. It's one of those genres that is clogged with the same old stories, same old characters, and same old cliches. It's also the one genre that seems to have the most junk in it - nearly anyone seems to think that they can write a zombie story.

Dying Days surprised me, in a good way. From the other reviews and the description I kind of expected the main character to be a cliched zombie killing machine a la Alice from the Resident Evil films. And for the first few pages I thought that was exactly what I was going to get. Luckily, Armand Rosamilia knows better. He added depth and honesty to the character that helped her stand out as something else. Just little things like her being out of breath after a short run actually do mean a lot to me when reading in this genre. The zombies are different, too, and while I won't say how I'll just say to pay attention to the tagline when it mentions 'extreme'. It's good to see people doing something different.

There are also very few of the editing, grammar, and formatting errors that bog down and ruin so many indie releases - so few that I'm actually struggling to give an example right now. With more indies showing up in the market, it's nice to see a book that someone actually took the time to turn into a finished product instead of throwing out a rough draft.

I'd actually give this a 3.5 star review, but that's probably because I'm a picky guy. 3.5 is a great book in my opinion, however, so I'm rounding up to four. What are the criticisms, you ask?

There's a lot of the dreaded 'telling, not showing' going on. It lessens as the book goes on and more people are introduced, but for the first little bit it's present - however, with a book where there's only one character for lengths of time it can be a tricky task to accomplish. I just wish instead of blocks of information it was given in a more...organic way, if that makes sense. Like I said - it gets much better as Mr. Rosamilia finds his footing and the book goes on.

My only other criticism is simply that there are a few genre cliches in there. Some cheesy one liners, characters that you know are gonna show up and either survive or die right away, etc. HOWEVER, this is a book that kind of embraces its excess, and the cliches are handled well enough that they don't ruin the book in the least. It stands out as something different throughout the book, so it makes it a little more glaring when those things pop up.

If you're looking for a solid, well written zombie tale then this is one to pick up. It's not the same old run of the mill thing and it's certainly worth spending a few hours with. The ending is perfect, and leaves you ready to check out the next book in the series. I highly recommend it for zombie or horror fans!