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Book Blog: Autumn by David Moody
I have the feeling I've read this book before, quite a long time ago, which is certainly possible as it was written in 2001. I'm more in the mood to appreciate it now. It's a zombie novel written before the huge flood in the last few years, and quite distinct from most of them. It is British. Very British.
Autumn features one firearm in the entire book, known as "the rifle." That's all we need to know because any gun, presumably in this case a hunting rifle, would be able to take out a human being with a headshot, zombied or otherwise.
It also features a random selection of very ordinary Britons, upon whom the zompoc falls without warning, except that a lot of people are off sick from work on the day everything falls apart. There's Michael, a midlevel computer geek whose boss makes him go and talk to unappreciative high school students, Emma, a medical student and Carl, a maintenance guy. He's the only one with a family to lose among these three, which is crucial for later developments in the story. They're all doing their not-too-exciting thing on this day. In this, the book is certainly like most other zombie novels.
However, there's a trope I've noticed in many of the American novels which is absent in this book and that's the presence of the expert. Maybe he or she is a military individual, or a survivalist, or a zombie fan with enough practical smarts to notice that the dream has become reality. I've made a small list of some of the best ones which I'll put at the end of this post. The expert, whatever else s/he may be, knows guns and the authors often detail them in precise and agonising detail, unless you're a gamer for whom it's kind of useful to be told this kind of stuff. I now know, for example, that it would be unlikely that I could conceal a Desert Eagle about my person for very long.
These expert characters work out what is going on and then they act; they usually leave town, bugging out to some well-prepared retreat/bunker/cabin in the woods. In Autumn the random, stunned survivors gather in a community centre and they sit. They have no idea what to do and so they do nothing. They have real, believable, psychological shock and damage. It takes days before the three characters named above do act, and even then there's a lot of stupid bickering and driving aimlessly before they find somewhere to go.
The zombies too are not the ravenous, hostile hordes so beloved of American zombie fiction. They are literally the walking dead, the stupid, blind, aimless dead who are not aware of the living, to begin with. Their threat lies in their huge numbers and the fact that they are drawn to the living and can just stumble right over you in their thousands. This is every bit as terrifying as zombies which eat you. You're just as dead if you're crushed accidentally by a horde, as if they're actively seeking to do you in. And these ordinary people, who unlike some of the American characters never planned to live in the Zompoc, have no idea what to do. They just happened to survive and they don't know why. Gradually things start to change and it becomes clear that they're not going to go back to how they were before.
This book is the first in a series, though I understand when it was written, it was actually offered for free online by the author, who had little expectation of any more being wanted. It therefore ends fairly well in its own right, though I probably will read the others in the series. They're all at Stefen's Books.
Some of the recommended American zombie novels:
Living with the Dead - Joshua Guess. The only blog telling the story of the zompoc day by day as it happens, from the POV of the author as character, a self-confessed zombie nerd also into survivalism and martial arts. It was a series of posts before becoming Kindle books.
100 Days of Deadland - Rachel Aukes. A retelling of Dante's Inferno for the modern day, with zombies. Instead of Virgil, there's a Special Forces soldier to help the viewpoint character survive.
The Remaining - D.J. Molles. With a military plan to deal with pandemics, civil disaster and zompocs that doesn't work so well when it meets actual zombies. [Perth locals; this book and its sequels are also at Stefen's Books.]
The Becoming - Jessica Meigs. Also with a military plan that is also sort of responsible for the zompoc in the first place. The expert is an ex-Israeli army sniper, Cade Alton. She is awesome :-)
White Flag of the Dead - Joseph Talluto. Very traditional military zompoc, though the main character is a high school principal with a large gun collection who becomes a gung ho leader to save the human race against Skynet - sorry, against zombies and marauders.
No Easy Hope - James N. Cook. The viewpoint character's crazy survivalist friend was right all the time.
Autumn features one firearm in the entire book, known as "the rifle." That's all we need to know because any gun, presumably in this case a hunting rifle, would be able to take out a human being with a headshot, zombied or otherwise.
It also features a random selection of very ordinary Britons, upon whom the zompoc falls without warning, except that a lot of people are off sick from work on the day everything falls apart. There's Michael, a midlevel computer geek whose boss makes him go and talk to unappreciative high school students, Emma, a medical student and Carl, a maintenance guy. He's the only one with a family to lose among these three, which is crucial for later developments in the story. They're all doing their not-too-exciting thing on this day. In this, the book is certainly like most other zombie novels.
However, there's a trope I've noticed in many of the American novels which is absent in this book and that's the presence of the expert. Maybe he or she is a military individual, or a survivalist, or a zombie fan with enough practical smarts to notice that the dream has become reality. I've made a small list of some of the best ones which I'll put at the end of this post. The expert, whatever else s/he may be, knows guns and the authors often detail them in precise and agonising detail, unless you're a gamer for whom it's kind of useful to be told this kind of stuff. I now know, for example, that it would be unlikely that I could conceal a Desert Eagle about my person for very long.
These expert characters work out what is going on and then they act; they usually leave town, bugging out to some well-prepared retreat/bunker/cabin in the woods. In Autumn the random, stunned survivors gather in a community centre and they sit. They have no idea what to do and so they do nothing. They have real, believable, psychological shock and damage. It takes days before the three characters named above do act, and even then there's a lot of stupid bickering and driving aimlessly before they find somewhere to go.
The zombies too are not the ravenous, hostile hordes so beloved of American zombie fiction. They are literally the walking dead, the stupid, blind, aimless dead who are not aware of the living, to begin with. Their threat lies in their huge numbers and the fact that they are drawn to the living and can just stumble right over you in their thousands. This is every bit as terrifying as zombies which eat you. You're just as dead if you're crushed accidentally by a horde, as if they're actively seeking to do you in. And these ordinary people, who unlike some of the American characters never planned to live in the Zompoc, have no idea what to do. They just happened to survive and they don't know why. Gradually things start to change and it becomes clear that they're not going to go back to how they were before.
This book is the first in a series, though I understand when it was written, it was actually offered for free online by the author, who had little expectation of any more being wanted. It therefore ends fairly well in its own right, though I probably will read the others in the series. They're all at Stefen's Books.
Some of the recommended American zombie novels:
Living with the Dead - Joshua Guess. The only blog telling the story of the zompoc day by day as it happens, from the POV of the author as character, a self-confessed zombie nerd also into survivalism and martial arts. It was a series of posts before becoming Kindle books.
100 Days of Deadland - Rachel Aukes. A retelling of Dante's Inferno for the modern day, with zombies. Instead of Virgil, there's a Special Forces soldier to help the viewpoint character survive.
The Remaining - D.J. Molles. With a military plan to deal with pandemics, civil disaster and zompocs that doesn't work so well when it meets actual zombies. [Perth locals; this book and its sequels are also at Stefen's Books.]
The Becoming - Jessica Meigs. Also with a military plan that is also sort of responsible for the zompoc in the first place. The expert is an ex-Israeli army sniper, Cade Alton. She is awesome :-)
White Flag of the Dead - Joseph Talluto. Very traditional military zompoc, though the main character is a high school principal with a large gun collection who becomes a gung ho leader to save the human race against Skynet - sorry, against zombies and marauders.
No Easy Hope - James N. Cook. The viewpoint character's crazy survivalist friend was right all the time.