Plague Town by Dana Fredsti

Disclaimer: I received a free, signed copy of this and the other two books in the series at a local reading the author did. While I’ve tried to keep this review honest I do understand that it’s considered good form to be up-front about these things.

I don’t normally read zombie fiction. I do like the occasional zombie movie, and absolutely loved the Evil Dead series (who doesn’t love Bruce Campbell?), but when it comes to books about the zombie apocalypse I generally to find them a bit ‘meh’. However, this one has me thinking maybe I should re-examine the genre.

From page one this book is just packed to the rafters with action, zombies, sass, attitude, zombies, violence, humour, zombies, pseudo-science and enough pop-culture references to keep any geek-girl(or boy) happy. The writing style is punchy and easy to read, and fairly keeps the pace going at a fair old clop.

The narrative focuses mainly on the series’ titular character, Ashley Parker, who is a college graduate who gets bitten by a zombie and then finds out she’s immune to their bites and as a result develops zombie-hunting superpowers. She’s then ‘recruited’ by a secret organisation whose primary mission is to contain the outbreak and make sure the world doesn’t find out that zombies are real.

Okay, maybe not the most original plot in the world, but who cares when it’s so much fun to read? This is what I’d call trashy popcorn fiction at it’s damn-near best, and I’d happily recommend this to anyone with even a slight interest in zompocalypse fiction or similar. Not quite worth the full five stars, but it did come damned close.