REVIEW: Day By Day Armageddon by: J.L.Bourne
Sporadic news reports indicate chaos and violence spreading through
the U.S cities. An unknown evil is sweeping the planet. The dead are
rising to claim the earth as the new dominant spcies in the food
chain. INTERCEPT COMPLETE.Survivor,
In your hands is the handwritten journal depicting one man’s struggle for survival. Trapped in the midst of a global disaster. He must make decisions;choices that ultimately mean life, or the eternal curse to walk as one of them. Enter if you will into his world
– The world of the Undead
J.L.Bourne brings forth a zombie survival story in the format of a personal journal. This was an odd yet tactful way to write out his story. This book was an entertaining read due to the survival doctrine situated throughout.
Plot: The story starts off with the main character beginning his new years journal. It’s apparent that he has is serving in a branch of the military, and as time progresses he gets a little cautious about the news reports concerning a virus. Then all hell breaks loose. The plot advanced throughout the story with a strong determined pace, which I would consider much tougher to create considering the format of the story.
Style: This is where problems arise. The author takes advantage of the journal format to further build suspense within the story. What hurts the horror elements to the story is that the reader knows that the character is alive, because he would have to be alive to write the following entry. This augments the reader’s empathy and fear for the character’s well being because that character’s resulting condition is predetermined before the conflict can be shown. This hurts the story hard because it is hard to surprise the reader when the character is telling the story as it had already happened, and not as it was happening.
Characters: This is where the story hits a bad bump in the road. The format of the book also destroys nearly all foundations for solid character development, because interaction between characters is filtered through the writer of the journal (main character) and leaves the interpretation into the hands of the writer, instead of the hands of the reader. In a 3rd person POV story, the reader has the ability to interpret and make their own judgements about the characters as they are, and not how they are concieved by one of the characters. The journal format loses that oppritunity to allow the reader to assess the characters in the story, and to interpret them as they may.
Although with the journal format, in some cases the main character can be developed very well if the author establishes a concrete connection between reader and writer, but the author also comes up short by trying to attain that connection because of the main characters professional background. (which makes it harder for the reader to relate, and he doesn’t make up for this lost connection by intertwining the character’s persona into the words he writes)
Realism: The realism of this story was a very strong apsect of the story. He basically wrote a guide to surviving the zombie apocalypse, but presented it practically, as opposed to just theorizing about survival doctrine. I mentioned before that the characters were weak, and this is mainly due to the fact that the main character in monotonous, is too professional and lacks personality. I got that he is trained to endure the worst, but he is still human afterall.
Overall: This was a fun book to read and think about one’s own methods to surviving the apocalypse. The characters were weak because the story was basically a survival guide that presented situations to prevents different tactics to surviving. (although it was really cool and very clever! it hurt the characters.) I bet that the author initially intended on writing a survival guide, but reconsidered and changed to a journal format to bring something ‘fresh’ to the genre. Despite its professional tone, it is a read that will make you think ‘how would I survive?’
Available at Amazon.
