The Eulogy (From the Publisher):
Since mankind began, civilizations have always fallen: the Romans, the Greeks, the Aztecs…Now it’s our turn. Huge earthquakes rock the world. Cities are destroyed. But something even more awful is happening. An ancient evil has been unleashed, turning everday people into hunters, killers, crazies.
Mason's mother is dying after a terrible car accident. As he endures a last vigil at her hospital bed, his school is bombed and razed to the ground, and everyone he knows is killed. Aries survives an earthquake aftershock on a bus, and thinks the worst is over when a mysterious stranger pulls her out of the wreckage, but she’s about to discover a world changed forever. Clementine, the only survivor of an emergency town hall meeting that descends into murderous chaos, is on the run from savage strangers who used to be her friends and neighbors. And Michael witnesses a brutal road rage incident that is made much worse by the arrival of the police--who gun down the guilty party and then turn on the bystanding crowd.
Where do you go for justice when even the lawmakers have turned bad? These four teens are on the same road in a world gone mad. Struggling to survive, clinging on to love and meaning wherever it can be found, this is a journey into the heart of darkness – but also a journey to find each other and a place of safety.
The Epitaph (In a Nutshell): A compelling survival horror that puts an interesting spin on the zombie genre.
Dearly Departed,
We are gathered here today to discuss Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts. I love a good survival horror, and this certainly had me on the edge of my seat as I waited to see what would eventually happen to each of the characters. I liked the stories told through the eyes of the four different characters, and I especially enjoyed their moments of realisation that something was going seriously wrong in this world.
The 'zombies' in this book aren't the dead who have risen to walk the earth, but instead are regular people who have been infected with a kind of rage. I would've liked a little more explanation of how this came about, because even when you reach the end you're left asking more than a few questions, but this withholding of knowledge does serve to create a nice atmosphere of fear and helplessness.
What I particularly liked about this version of the apocalypse was the attention to detail, which is something that often gets overlooked in stories like these. The characters' need to change clothes because they smell (or got peed on), the crappy food they're forced to eat, and one character's death due to a pre-existing medical condition were all well thought out details that helped make this end of the world feel like a realistic one.
