Today is Read an ebook day, being celebrated on social media with #ebookLove. I wanted to celebrate by reviewing my latest ebook read.
Zero Hour (Zero Hour #1)
by Justin Bell, Mike Kraus
Genre: Apocalyptic Science Fiction
165 pages
Liked It A lot
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.
An unsuspecting country. A rogue state. A weapon the likes of which the world has never seen.
Jackson Block finds himself stranded at 15,000 feet above Boston inside a plane with a dead pilot and no easy way down. When he reaches the ground he discovers that the city – and the country – has torn itself apart. With his fiancée stuck in a small town hours away, he must draw upon every resource he can muster to make it to her before those who would seek to profit from this unprecedented disaster come forth from the shadows…
Zero Hour is a 6-part novel-length post-apocalyptic survival thriller series that asks one simple question: do you have what it takes to survive? The story follows the unleashing of a bio-weapon on an unsuspecting American populace, killing hundreds of millions in the blink of an eye.
Review:
A very interesting book about a next generation virus made to target specific populations and the fallout from the virus’ release. The book drove me crazy at first because it kept hopping between new characters is was introducing. It took a while to figure out who the main characters were. There was no guarantee that if you got introduced to a character that the character was going to stay in the story.
Light spoiler: They introduced a character at the beginning, gave him a good back story, build him up so you think he’s going to be a main character and then proceed to kill him before the story really takes off. It’s a different kind of choice for setting up you story.
I had to accept that this being a Apocalyptic Science Fiction story the author were going about setting up things in their own way. They seemed to want to really impact the read with the scope and magnitude of the collapse. I also think they wanted to differentiate it from Zombie stories that also follow similar setups with outbreaks.
Zero Hour is a non-Zombie outbreak apocalyptic story, but it borrows heavily from Zombie outbreak troupes. The lone wolf who finds himself a tribe to travel with through the ruined and dangerous landscape. The one bad guys who is seemingly indestructible. The government agency keeping secrets. But I’m not saying it’s a bad thing.
I really did enjoy the fast pace and the intrigue of the setup for the story. And once I figured out who the main characters were I kinda grew attached to them too.
Bottom Line:
I liked it enough I bought the boxed set and started reading the second book right away.
I read Zero Hour for The StoryGraph’s Onboarding Reading Challenge 2021. 1. Read a book from your TBR containing one of your least-read moods
"His heart clamped tight, like fingers were clenching around it, and he pushed himself upright, making his way to a light switch on the wall. He slammed it down..." Zero Hour