Fall of Night is the sequel to Jonathan Maberry’s excellent Dead of Night, one of the best traditional zombie books ever written. The sequel picks up right where the first book left off. If you haven’t read Dead of Night, run—don’t walk—and go get it, and read it before reading further, for here there be spoilers.
Done? Okay, here we go.
Dez and Billy are in the school, and the military has just stood down from eliminating every man, woman, and child in the place. Stebbins, PA is under quarantine, and the blockade is holding—or at least that’s what the general in charge thinks, and feeds up the chain of command to the president and his national security advisor.
Inadequate procedures are part of the problem, but much worse is the prophet of the red mouth, executed serial killer and patient zero of Lucifer 113, Homer Gibbons. Gibbons flees the quarantine zone and goes on an infectious rampage, to which the military’s response makes everything that much worse, and Maberry does not waste the chance to give us an intimate glimpse into the killer’s mind.
Fall of Night is a near-perfect sequel to a near-perfect book, as personal and gut-wrenching as it is violent and global in scale.
Sam Imura’s presence makes it clear that Fall of Night is a prequel to the Rot & Ruin series (though it is very much not a Young Adult novel), and an allusion to Joe Ledger and cameos by Tommy and Benny Imura solidly anchor the story in Maberry’s overall world.
A world you’d never want to live in, but visiting is so much fun.
Available at Amazon.
