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Under A Graveyard Sky (2013)

by John Ringo(Favorite Author)

4.14 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1451639198 (ISBN13: 9781451639193)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Baen

series

Black Tide Rising

review 1: I loved the premise - zombie apocalypse occurs because someone used weaponized aerosol sprays in U.S. airports to infect the widest number of people - check! The smart survivors head out into the open sea - Check! Then they start rescuing other people at sea who might be trapped on their ships with zombies - again, very cool - Check! So far, so good - makes a lot of sense.However, John Ringo also does some things with his characters that annoy me. The main protagonists are all hyper competent warriors, smart, strong and infallible; even the 13 and 15 year old daughters. That's fine, but I think it's more interesting if there is some character development or growth throughout the book. It's also more interesting if major characters make mistakes and learn from them. However... more, this is my main beef with this book. The main character has a daughter who is 13 years old and becomes an amazing zombie fighter, ala Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I don't know very much about 13 year old girls, but this stretched my credulity. What really freaked me out is that one of the older male characters, seeing how bad ass she was, started flirting with her. Ewwww. Plus the dad puts his daughter in tremendous danger over and over again just because she's really good at fighting zombies. I can't think of any parent that would willingly risk their daughter in that kind of situation. That said, it's a fast read, with an inevitable sequel.
review 2: First, let's just understand that this is a very, very violent book. It tries to be "The Walking Dead" to some extent with lots of Zombie killing. It is a very honest look at logistics and Ringo not only seems to comprehend logistics, but from time to time ties logistic in with historic asides. This helped the book remain interesting.Second, it is very difficult to translate wholesale zombie slaughter into text and I think Ringo does as good a job as anybody could do with it. That said, I have to make a comparison to AMC television's "The Walking Dead" series.. and that comparison is that without the human element of "The Walking Dead" we would have a boring survival show about simply killing as many zombies in as many gory ways as possible. The same would be true of this book, and one of the reasons that the book doesn't get a 4th star from me is that Ringo's handling of that element isn't nearly as accomplished as his setup, his action, and his idea of surviving (which in this case, is at sea-- in my thinking a stupid place to try to survive if for no other reason the limited supply of fresh water-- but Ringo makes those elements work).. Ringo just makes me want to say "Oh, C'mon" in places. For example, there is an impromptou concert in Central Park and Steve (the main hero) takes his family and his friend, Tom, out to dinner and then to the outdoor concert even when zombies are already beginning to overrun the city. No father in his right mind would do that, even if he thought it was going to be the last concert in the entire world. So, I just said "Oh, C'mon"Survivalist family or not-- There's no way that a father is going to allow his 13 year old daughter, well-trained or not, to board boats containing zombies and to lead the attack squads to kill zombies and search for survivors. While they would expect their daughter to be able to defend herself, you just don't put your kid on the front line like that, unless there is no choice, and there was a choice... So, I just said "Oh, c'mon!"Also, at one point, Ringo got confused about who the father was and who the friend who provided the warning was, calling the father (Steve) by his friends name (Tom)-- he only did it once, but hey, shouldn't the editor have caught that mistake.. (or perhaps the editor inadvertently changed it).. The book rolls to a conclusion with to be continued-- and here- Ringo tries to bring the human element.. His 13 year old she-devil warrior daughter has started to experience some of the pscyhological trauma and emotion -- not from killing zombies (she doesn't seem to see them as people) but from the awful experience of finding partially eaten women and children survivors.. She has taken to carrying a Teddy Bear with her in her backpack, and expressing her emotion to the bear-- which leaves us at the end of the book with some concern for her stability-- but then, they are clearing a cruise ship overrun with zombies, and this is a day-after-day activity and really tends to leave her worn out and emotionally exhuasted... We begin to see cracks in her facade which should have appeared sooner, in my opinion.. those cracks could have provided the missing human element. Also, at the end, there is a semi-romantic cliffhanger that I won't spoil for you, which promises to provide more human element in the sequel. Though I have the sequel on hand, I will spend some time with another genre or two for the next couple of books, because for now.. I feel like I've binged on watching a full season of Walking Dead-- at least the zombie fighting scenes.Finally, the last reason I'm not giving this one four stars.. because it is a really good book-- is:Ringo, seems to have missed an important element of current entertainment projects of this magnitude.... i.e. Game of Thrones (both books and television) Walking Dead, Sons of Anarchy, etc. The element is to build a fairly large cast of characters... flesh out their stories... make the reader truly care about them... and then-- put them in real risk situations--- occasionally even allowing them to lose their lives in a tragic manner (Ned Stark?)-- During the entire novel, I only felt once that our heroine, the lovely thirteen year old Amazon Warrior, Faith, was in mortal danger. Then, it was almost like a joke when she survived. This missing element, hopefully, added in during the dequel-- really hurt what could have been a very powerful and realistic zombie scenario. less

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