Plague Town by Dana Fredsti - a review

First off, 2 questions;

1) Do you enjoy stories of the Zombie Apocalypse?, and,

2) Are you a fan of Buffy The Vampire Slayer?

If you answered yes to either of these questions you are pretty much going to like this book. If you answered yes to both questions there is no real doubt, you are going to love Plague Town.The reason for this will become obvious from pretty early on - Plague Town is pretty much Buffy The Zombie Slayer - and it carries the comparison well.

Our heroine for this series (there are 2 more that follow: Plague Town and Plague World) is Ashley Parker, a 29 year old Student and resident of Redwood Grove. As the story starts Ashley is just getting over a bout of Walker's Flu, a strain of flu that is doing the rounds. She is one of the lucky ones - most people are dying from it.....and then coming back. She also survives a zombie attack while out with her boyfriend. When she wakes up she finds she is 'special'.There are only a few who survive the attacks but those few seem to develop enhanced powers (not proper superhero type powers, more things like enhanced senses, rapid healing etc.) These select few, known as Wild Cards are enlisted by the Powers That Be to be trained as a 'Zombie Defence Squad'

There are a lot of good things going for this book - it flows at a good pace (I finished this in 2 days), the virus and it's effect (apart from the name, but I'll come to that later) are believable and the sense of 'impending doom' is never far away. There is also a lot of weaponry in this book and it is pretty obvious the author has done her homework.

On the downside (and it's not that bad really) I wasn't happy with the virus name (Walker's Flu) - you catch Walker's flu, you die, you come back as a 'Walker' (as the walking dead are known) - just felt a bit lazy. Another peeve I had was with the character of Ashley herself. She's a 29 year old but at times comes across as being much younger - but that could be just due to the people she is with (there are more younger members of the Wild Cards than older)

Don't let this put you off though - this is a real page turner of a book and I will certainly be following the further adventures of Ashley Parker and her fellow Wild Cards

7/10 stars