As a reviewer, I’ve become hesitant when receiving new books to read and review. When they arrive I’m reminded of that line from Forrest Gump, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates’. You never know if the book will be good or so bad that you just don’t want to finish it.
Not so with Rhiannon Frater ‘s Last Bastion of the Living. This book is set in a future time where earth has been ravaged by a virus that has created the Inferi Scourge. These creatures are zombies but are referred to as Scrags or Scourge. The reason for this is explained in the book. Bastion is just like the name implies, it is the last walled city left standing but now surrounded by millions of scourges.
Vanguard Maria Martinez, one of the central characters, is introduced as the city is attempting to remove the scourge from outside the walls. This mission is not successful and results in mass casualties. Time passes by and the city government has come up with another idea. This idea at first seems to be a solid plan but not without risk. If a small team of special operations personnel can reach the gates that seal off the valley and close them then the scrags within the valley could be removed without more entering.
Sound easy?
It’s not.
With a city running low on resources, rolling blackouts and increasing population, it’s vital that the team succeed in closing the gates and removing the Inferi Scourge. If they don’t succeed the city will be forced to decrease the population and hope that whoever is left can last two more years. That’s pretty good motivation to complete the mission.
Oh yeah, there’s this small catch. Anyone chosen for the mission outside the walls is to be injected with the Inferi Scourge virus so the scrags won’t attack them.
Of course the team is promised a cure for the virus. Stick and carrot and all that. Maria and her team are put on the ground and begin the task of clearing the area and moving towards the gates. Once on the ground they soon discover that all is not how they were briefed. There are some ‘anomalies’ to the scourge and they find out they are not the first team to be sent out on this mission.
Meanwhile back in the city, events are transpiring to change the government and Maria’s secret lover, Dwayne, also part of the constabulary yet her superior officer is slowly uncovering information that is Earth shattering and could change the entire history of what they know about the virus.
Overall, Last Bastion of the Living was a very well written, suspenseful zombie novel. The characters were very well developed and integrated into the plot with such ease that as a reader, I had an actual interest in what happened to them. The plot was not simple; it was involved and actually more involved than most books in this genre. The complexity of the storyline made this novel a joy to read. This is not your average zombies show up lets all try to survive type book. Last Bastion of the Living is a thinking man’s book and the title is a nice play on the subject matter as well as being symbolic.
Rhiannon Frater’s writing reaches out and grabs the reader, puts them into the story and makes them an integral part of the novel not just some outsider reading what happens.
Available on Amazon.
