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What Is The Reawakening About?

A series of terrible things begin to happen when a scientist with a dark past resumes his genetic experiments in a small Maine town. The animals suddenly become aggressive for no apparent reason, attacking anyone within sight, including Rick’s wife. After slaughtering his diseased herd, Rick realizes to his horror that they have come back to life. Soon the farm is under siege by the deranged animals, and a small group of refugees who have assembled in the farmhouse must hunker down and defend themselves against the terrible onslaught of cannibals.

The entire town soon becomes filled with the human flesh-eaters, threatening the farmhouse and the survivors within it. But they all have the same message before they reawaken: they are seeking the chosen ones. The onset of winter provides a temporary defense against the army of the dead, but with supplies running low, the survivors realize they must formulate a plan before the arrival of spring and the dreaded melt-off. And as the world outside them descends into total madness, a surprising leader emerges from the group who will hopefully lead them to safety.

Our The Reawakening Review

Certainly a different kind of zombie book. This book was a quick and different read. I have been a zombie book reviewer for a while, and I’ve devoured quite a few zombie reads in my time, but never have I seen one with zombies quite like this. A creative, original concept that has a lot of potential to be a great series.

Plot: The plot itself is pretty good, but the real eye-grabber are the zombies. Souza’s zombies are a new breed that I’ve never quite seen before. The infection initially transfers from animals to humans, not so original you may say, but there’s more. Once infected, the human undergoes a strange and sometimes prophetic vision and monologue. After their little spiel is over, they die and turn into flesh-eater. But these flesh-eaters are not your garden-varity zombies, these zombies are bestial and more dangerous. These zombies, if they have contracted the infection from an animal, they will adopt some of the physical characteristics of that animal, giving the undead some added traits that improve their hunting/feasting capabilities threefold. As much as I want to further explain this, I will hold back because what Souza does with this strange slant on the zombie is truly unique and interesting as heck to read. Just seeing this new and original take on making the zombie more dangerous is well worth the price of admission.

My favorite aspect of this book is the evolution of chaos. The Reawakening starts off slow, and gradually picks up speed. The infection starts in a rural environment, so it isn’t really a pandemic yet at the beginning. But, by the end of the book, the author shows us an excellent chaotic atmosphere that felt very real and gritty. So unlike so many zombie books that either start off with chaos and delve into post-apocalyptia or a book that is purely chaos, the author gives us a book that begins with a small-scale outbreak that slowly spreads, and by the end of the book we have chaos. Great tension building, and the ending really resonates with the reader.

Characters: This is where I’m on the fence. As much as I enjoyed the original zombies, I had a hard time connecting with the characters. Don’t get me wrong, the author’s superior command of descriptive language really drew the characters well, but the cast of characters really left me wondering what the author intended to do with them. Dar, the teenage girl, goes completely nuts in this story, and yeah, I can see why considering the things that she has been through, but what annoys me is how her father―the narrator―reacts to how his daughter is a few lettuce shy of a sandwhich. I couldn’t find any sympathy for the narrator because he doesn’t do much to help out his daughter; he seems content with her going nuts. The narrator isn’t much of a strong father-figure, and even though it did give the character a ripe-flaw (and sometimes flaws is where characters truly develop some personality), I felt it very hard to connect with the narrator. The way the character of Dar delves into madness I felt could have been done a tad differently. Maybe instead of her snapping into complete-badass (and slightly sociopathic) mode, maybe she could have had a slow burn into madness, which would have given the reader more time to understand how she is changing.

Even though I stated my distaste for the characters, I will mention that the author redeems himself at the end of the book with a plot-twist that I didn’t see coming. Great ending to this book.

Overall: To start off, I’d like to say that I admire Souza’s writing style. He has a really great way of saying things and even though the pace of the story is pretty slow, his style of description makes it move along at a good clip. So, a brief overview of the book in my opinion: Awesome and original zombie idea, good plot even though it dragged at times, I wasn’t fond of the characters and the writing was strong.

Where can you get The Reawakening?

You can pickup The Reawakening on Amazon!