What:
Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End
Who:
Manel Loureiro (I know, the site isn’t active, but the message is hilarious!)
Hell-ooo, nurse!
Oh wait, Manel Loureiro is a practicing attorney and international best-selling author, not a nurse. I suppose that may have something to do with my heart did some pitter-pattering when I finished the best zombie book I’ve read in a dog’s age and saw his bio. Good looking and obviously brilliant? Yes, please!
Enough about my new crush, though…
The nitty gritty:
So far as I can tell, Beginning of the End is the only one of the Apocalypse Z series currently available in English, though if you happen to read Italian, the second installment (Dark Days) is available to you. Or, if you’re fluent enough in Spanish to read well, I believe the third has been published as well (The Wrath of the Righteous). If only I’d kept up with my Spanish…
This is a very good book, folks. Doubtless, some of the credit has to go to translator Pamela Carmell — it can’t be easy to translate a 300+ page book successfully. Think of all those idioms that make no sense from one culture to another.
It’s written in the journal-entry style, likely due to its having been written as blog entries originally. Day by Day Armageddon by J. L. Bourne came about similarly and is also written as journal entries. How cool is it that we get to witness a new genre emerging as a consequence of the techno-world we’re living in? (Total side note: The third in the series, Shattered Hourglass, was delivered to my door this morning. So excited to read it! I plan to write a review on the series once I’ve read #3.)
There’s not much else to say without any spoilers. This is a very well written book. There are moments that may seem familiar if you read a lot of zombie books — not in a plagiaristic sense, but in a questions that need answering for zombie books sense. As a writer and as a fan of the genre, I find it very interesting to watch it develop. How do authors deal with fast vs. slow? Journal-entry style or a more traditional 3rd person POV, limited or omniscient?
I’m off to tidy the house pretend to do something productive then succumb to the next zombie book.
An Owl in the Sun 