REVIEW: The First Days: As the World Dies by: Rhiannon Frater

In The First Days: As the World Dies we follow two women, Jenni and Katie, as they navigate the suddenly zombie filled world and find a place that they can be safe. It’s the first book in a trilogy and not only starts off strong but ends on a note that wants you to have the next book out to read! Honestly the introduction to In The First Days is one of the strongest introductions in the zombie genre that I’ve read or seen to date. It not only lets you envision it but you get to emphasize with what Jenni has to be feeling as she watches her life fall apart in front of her eyes.

A zombie novel with female protagonists isn’t unheard of but it isn’t the norm. It’s also rare that the characters are able to find and create that many truly safe locations shortly after a zombie outbreak spreads across the glove so quickly. Thankfully Rhiannon went with what she knows as I won’t simply say that “it works” to either of these choices because that wouldn’t be giving this amazingly well written novel the credit that it deserves. Honestly this tale couldn’t have been told any other way than it was and I enjoyed reading through every second of it!

While I did feel that the ‘horror’ aspect of the novel faded into action as the book progressed I feel that is something that SHOULD happen. In something that happens over the period of a day, a week, a month true terror will slowly fade into the background against doing what you have to do to survive. If it doesn’t you probably will get caught in it’s grasp and not make it.

At any rate we follow both Jenni and Katie as they attempt to both find a place that is safe and recover the last of Jenni’s family. For the most part each of the scenario’s that they fall into are plausible in a world where the undead are a bunch of sh amblers that quickly turn their pray. The two areas they find that are safe are neither fully secure and both are exactly what could be actual safe spots. While the focus is on zombies being the main threat to humanity a few of the key issues that come up are from people being either selfish or stupid. It’s also interesting to note that while they do have a small town sized group of survivors at the end that they all try to follow a society structure that would mirror the world now for the most part and doesn’t immediately, at least in the first novel, fall into chaos. People are staying mostly cohesive as a group and not letting the world completely fall apart in their limited safe area.

On a side note this is a world where zombies existed in media before they became ‘real’ and there are a ton of little easter eggs throughout for zombie fans. Romero’s films are references as is The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks. It’s hard to imagine that in every single world that is created with zombies that it isn’t after they were already imagined. It’s far more feasible we’ll see the undead come about from a mad scientist so the ‘idea’ of zombies is already out there.

Available on Amazon.