Welcome to Wickedly Bookish's second stop on the Rotter World Virtual Book Tour brought to you by Innovative Online Tours. I mentioned in on my first stop that I was planning on reviewing Rotter World and was asked by IO Tours if I would post it as part of the extended tour. I readily agreed and here it is! Enjoy!
Review
Rotter World
Scott M. Baker
Genre: Science Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic, Zombies
Rating: 4
Eight months after the zombie apocalypse took Earth, a group of brave survivors gets a chance to make their world safe again. Dr. Compton has found a cure for the virus he inadvertently created. The catch? It's back at his lab facility hundreds of miles away through the rotter infested ruins of the American East Coast. Will Mike Robson and his crew of tenacious survivors be able to bring back the cure and take back their world, or will they die trying?
Rotter World is a stomach churning, heart-pumping, zombie killing extravaganza. A true feast for the... zombie in you. I learned the hard way that it it not a wise idea to eat while you read this book. I often multi-task while reading and thought, "Hey, I might as well finish this book up while I have some teriyaki beef and broccoli for lunch." Bad idea, only a few pages later I encountered a particularly detailed death scene in which one of the characters gets eaten alive. While the scene was well written and emotionally evocative, I would have preferred to keep my lunch out of it. You see, Rotter World is very much a book that spares no detail when it comes to graphic gore. While this adds to the desperate and often times disturbing tone of the book nicely, it may not be for everyone. So...you have been warned.
Moving onward, Rotter World offers the reader a unique and intriguing alternate view of the zombie apocalypse in which the virus is spread by vampires in an attempt to distract humans from hunting them down. This of course backfires spectacularly on them and the vampires find themselves facing an increasingly desperate situation; the complete extinction of their kind. When the book begins, humans and what is left of the vampires have teamed up to better their chances of surviving in a hostile alliance that threatens to boil over at any moment. The tension is incredible as it offsets the already overwhelming threat of the zombie horde. Not all of the human survivors hate the vampires which also leads to another layer of hostilities among the group. I loved this, but wished that the loyalties of the characters hadn't been so obvious. I would have loved to have read a scene in which a human you thought neutral or for the vampires turned on one of them during a zombie onslaught. I love that kind of NO WAY! moment. Regardless there are plenty of action sequences and you get to see how prejudices effect the decisions of the group in life threatening situations. I won't say who, but I was very upset to see my favorite vamp go. I was like, "Scott, oh no you didn't!" Kill off my favorite character why don't you? Who are you, George R.R. Martin? I was sad, but it did do the trick of keeping me emotionally invested in the story.
The only thing that I can really critique here is consistency. With all the action and character interaction Baker throws at us that gets our hearts pumping, some in-between scenes come across a bit dry. I know it's hard to make colorful transition scenes when you've just allowed your characters to barely escape from a hauntingly bloody battle, but there were a few times when I felt Baker's writing was becoming more technical in order to explain rather than making readers see it through the already well established interactions between characters. I stress this is only occasionally, but these parts were just so stark in comparison to the rest of the story that they really killed the mood.
Speaking of "The Mood" Baker waxes erotic a couple of times throughout the novel showing readers both the wonderful and destructive sides of the human need for closeness. I was glad to have this part of human nature addressed within a zombie novel as the genre normally stays away from sensuality. What better motivation is there to incite DEFCON levels of the horizontal mambo than the almost definite possibility that you will be cannibalized by mindless, rotting husks of your peers in the near future? I honestly can't think of any. I know I'm outing myself as a perv here, but I genuinely wish there had been more sexy scenes, especially with the vamps, *wink wink* but I digress...
I know this is becoming one mother trucker of a review, but I do have one last thing I'd like to tell you all about. I absolutely hate reading books or watching movies where the women spend more time screaming and crying than kicking-ass and taking names. Thank God for Baker's badass squad of zombie killing femme fatales. The Angels of Death are leather clad ladies with some seriously messed up pasts they have overcome by blowing away many a zombie. If there were some AOD merch like a shirt or a mug, I would be first in line to get me some. I loved these ladies who prove you best not underestimate a woman with serious baggage.
The Final Verdict
You're invited to a deadman's party. Make sure you gird your loins and bring a hardy constitution, maybe even a turtleneck. That is unless you plan on fraternizing with some vamps then by all means... Enjoy the ride. ^_^
FTC Disclosure
I was provided a copy of this book by the author and IO tours in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed above are my own.
About the Author
Born and raised in Everett,
Massachusetts (just outside of Boston), Scott M. Baker has spent the last
twenty-two years living in northern Virginia. He has authored several
short stories, including the e-chapbook “Dead Water” by D’Ink Well
Publications; “Rednecks Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things,” which appeared in the
autumn 2008 edition of the e-zine Necrotic Tissue; “Cruise of the Living
Dead,” which appeared in Living Dead Press’ Dead Worlds: Volume 3
anthology (August 2009); “Deck the Malls with Bowels of Holly,” which appeared
in Living Dead Press‘ Christmas Is Dead anthology (October 2009); and
“Denizens,” which appeared in Living Dead Press’ The Book of Horror anthology
(March 2010).
Born and raised in Everett,
Massachusetts (just outside of Boston), Scott M. Baker has spent the last
twenty-two years living in northern Virginia. He has authored several
short stories, including the e-chapbook “Dead Water” by D’Ink Well
Publications; “Rednecks Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things,” which appeared in the
autumn 2008 edition of the e-zine Necrotic Tissue; “Cruise of the Living
Dead,” which appeared in Living Dead Press’ Dead Worlds: Volume 3
anthology (August 2009); “Deck the Malls with Bowels of Holly,” which appeared
in Living Dead Press‘ Christmas Is Dead anthology (October 2009); and
“Denizens,” which appeared in Living Dead Press’ The Book of Horror anthology
(March 2010).
Scott’s first zombie novel, Rotter
World, which details the struggle between humans and vampires during a
zombie apocalypse, was released by Permuted Press in April 2012. He has also authored The Vampire
Hunters trilogy, which has been published by Pill Hill Press and received
excellent reviews from Famous Monsters of Filmland and Fangoria,
among others. Scott has finished his fifth novel, Yeitso, a homage to
the monster movies of the 1950s set in northern New Mexico, which is currently
with a publisher, and has begun his next novel, Hell Gates, the first in
a series of young adult novels set in a world in which the realms of Hell and
earth have merged.
When he is not busy writing, Scott
can either be found relaxing on his back deck with a good cigar and a cup of
iced coffee, or doting on the four house rabbits that live with him.
Twitter vampire_hunters
1 comment:
Wonderful post!! I seriously love this book! Hard to imagine this romance lover could fall in love with a Zombie book but it's great
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