In Cryptic D.A. Chaney has given us a novella that transfers us back through time into the 1800’s. While not the first novel to set us in a time period before modern technology has changed the fabric of society this novel gives us a great perspective of life before instant communication. If the zombie apocalypse ever does come we’re going to see it on Facebook, Twitter, television and any other source of media almost instantly. Sure most people will think it’s a joke off the bat but it’ll be clear pretty quickly that the dead have risen and are out to eat the living. Everyone will fear for their lives, mass panic will ensue and eventually we’ll probably end up having life go right back to normal after the brief interruption of zombies. (Sure every movie, television show, and book out there says otherwise but I have more faith that our already prepared for zombies society will deal with the problem and move on rather quickly.)
What about though in a time before instant communication? When people may have thought of the undead as just being sick or there was no way to quickl warn others? Let’s travel back to the 1800’s and see how a zombie outbreak would fair when people wouldn’t believe that human attacks would come in that form. Where as today the idea of ghouls were just bedtime stories and anyone in high society would scoff at the notion that something like that could actually be happening even when seeing it occur before their very eyes? How about a land where peasants will do anything for a dollar instead of starve and not really believing that things that shamble and moan in the nigh would be anything but regular thieves and murderers? That’s the time period and frame of mind we’re falling into when we fall into the world that D.A. Chaney has created for us.
We’re given an accounting of how zombies spread to humanity in early chapters though we aren’t really lead to know that is exactly what is happening right off the bat. We quickly learn about another race of creatures that are human like in nature though clearly are not our species. These creatures hunt humanity as dogs (and honestly we are nothing more then prey to them) though when one man fights back to try to rescue the woman he has come to love he ends up dying though in his death he has infected one of these creatures with a virus he has just contracted and from there we will see zombies.
The undead are not too prevalent in the opening chapters of the novella and I was originally thinking these creatures were going to be the main antagonists. We are introduced to Ed and Brock whose livelihood consists of grave robbing and when a robbery goes wrong we see that Brock believes Ed to be dead and goes off in search of another way to make money. Ed hasn’t received the split earned from the last haul though and goes in search of Brock who has taken a job at a local estate to help hunt wild animals that have been plaguing the Lord and Lady that live within. Quickly upon reaching the estate though Ed learns that something is wrong and it’s time to face a zombie outbreak head on in a land and time where guns are scarce to non-existent.
D. A. Chaney has given us a fun novella to read with some great characters. It is a peak into a world that I hope will be further explored in the future.
Available at Amazon.
