Scorched Earth (Zero Hour #2)
by Justin Bell, Mike Kraus
Genre: Apocalyptic Science Fiction
165 pages
Okay
Synopsis:
Content Rating: R There are no entries for these books on Book Trigger Warning or Trigger Warning Database. However these book include a lot of violence, death, and aggression.
The world teeters on the brink as the bio-weapon takes hold and the scattered remains of American civilization try to put the pieces back together. Jackson and his group head on the road to Connecticut in hopes of reuniting with his fiancee, unaware that things in his small home town are not what they seem.
Can Jackson, Clark, Broderick, Melinda, and Javier survive their long mid-winter excursion through the New England woods, and what role will the Scavengers play in America’s future?
Battle lines are being drawn and if you thought the bio-weapon was the worst threat to American safety, you ain’t seen nothing yet…
Review:
Read my review for Zero Hour Book #1 here. I enjoyed the first book so much that I grabbed the boxed set from the Kindle store and immediately began reading the second book.
Boy was I disappointed.
I feel like the writing just got lazy. They tried to stretch the story out and just didn’t have enough idea so our main party has recycled encounters. So it takes until the end of the book to get where you expect them to be at the halfway point.
There is also still a lot of jumping around between the main party, the government goons, the villain’s who are working their way into a gang of sorts, and other misc. people. The jumping around would be fine, IF when we came back to the main party some progress had been made. However when the story comes back to them no time has really pasted, and they are in the exact same situation they just got out of.
In the name of being “action-packed” the authors have just added in unnecessary action scenes that don’t move the story along.
I hung on until the end of the book though because the premise of this series is interesting. By the end I felt they had finally, maybe, gotten somewhere with the story.
Bottom Line:
I’m just not sure that I’m willing to stick it out to finish a series that’s mostly stuffing, and not enough meat. Which is why it gets the okay rating.
Potential Spoiler:
One other thing I didn’t enjoy from this book is the arch for “Scarface.” How in the world does he go from plane crash burn victim to killing machine in like half a day? He must have some Wolverine like regenerative powers. The story already has a villain he’s not needed, and it just muddles things up.
"I want my old world back," she repliead, her voice cracking.
"I think we all do, honey," Jackson replied. "But we have to accept this new world as it is." Scorched Earth