Review: Mercy by: Joshua Grover and David Patterson
Plot
Once place you don’t want to be when the Z-poc starts is in a plane, flying high over the ocean, but that’s exactly what happens. The plane goes down, and a few survivors awaken on a deserted island. While trying to stay alive, they have to stave off the now-zombiefied passengers who went down on the plane…
Review
I’m torn.
There is part of MERCY that is a good book. It’s written in journal form, told from the perspective of one of the survivors of a plane crash that left all but five people dead. It details the fight for survival that the survivors struggle with. It plays a lot like an episode of LOST, and it is probably the book’s strongest segment. It’s compelling and very intriguing.
Still, something nagged at me.
Even when the book shifted tone upon the arrival of a ship crewed by Hispanic men with unknown intentions which allowed the survivors to leave the island, and tried to become a tense psychological thriller, there was something that wasn’t sitting well with me. It wasn’t until the survivors made it back to America that it dawned on me.
Where the %^&* were all the zombies?
During the book’s first segment with the survivors on the island, there were only a couple of moments where zombies came into play. These undead worked their way from the ocean floor and somehow managed to make it to the island, and totally had the capacity of some hardcore zombies vs. survivor carnage. But, for some reason, the authors focused more on the survivalism theme, and kept the zombie carnage, with the exception of one scene with a nighttime assault by the water zombies, to a minimum.
During the boat sequence, there are some good tense moments, as the survivors try to determine the intentions of the crew as to whether they are good or bad, but again, no zombies.
It isn’t until the story morphs into a standard Mom-trying-to-get-back-to-her-kid story when the survivors hit the mainland and are taken in by the military that we get some good zombie action going. Sadly, by this point, it’s a little too late. We know how the story is going to end, and the zombie threat seems reduced to almost an afterthough.
The book does have some things going for it. The characters are well fleshed out, and the dialogue isn’t offensive. The scenes on the island are compelling. You want the characters to succeed and survive.
The problem, aside from limited zombies, is that the book tries to be too many things at once. It felt like the book couldn’t decide what it wanted to be more, so it decided be everything without really excelling at anything, which kind of sucked because I really wanted to like this book.
I think ultimately, that MERCY is a great survival story, but falls short as a zombie story or a psychological thriller. It’s not something I would recommend.
Available at Amazon.
