Customer Reviews

Apocalypse End: Reign of the Dead

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Being from Western Pennsylvania, I always assumed we had the corner on the market for the best zombie stories. With his "Reign of the Dead" series, Len Barnhart has proven that there are great living dead stories to be told about Virginia, Maryland and the Shenandoah Valley.

Barnhart has a writing style that lends itself extremely well to an action-packed story like this one. Words are not squandered on flowery descriptions (or, in this case, horrific ones), except where it is warranted. He simply gets right to the point. You will thank him for it, because there's a lot of plot to unfold.

The story traces the attempts of our protagonist, Jim Workman, and a few others trying to contact and eventually travel to an island off the coast of Virginia. But there are obstacles, in the form of a racist militia, hordes of walking dead and ... nasty! ... hungry rats! The plot travels like a speeding locomotive, and there's never a dull moment.

Character development takes a back seat to action -- in fact, you might say that character development is just stowed in the trunk. Each character can be summed up in one or two adjectives: cautious, caring, cowardly, reckless, angry, insane. This is all that is necessary for this kind of story. If I wanted character development, I would read "Wuthering Heights" or something...

There are a couple of knocks on this book (and these are shared by the first book as well).

The editing is fairly atrocious. I know, some people will chastise me for raising such a complaint, but I was shocked at the number of errors. I almost began to count them, but I didn't want to ruin my enjoyment of the story.

* ...And I fully expect that someone will post a review here, lambasting my grammar and spelling... *

The story does draw upon the many plot-lines previously seen in other books and movies from the genre. Sometimes, phrases were taken directly from movies like "Dawn of the Dead." I saw this more as an homage to what came before -- and it usually drew a wry smile from me.

But let's put these minor criticisms back in perspective: despite these flaws, I loved this book (and the first in the series, "Reign of the Dead"). By no means am I a fast reader, but I finished each of the books in one evening. I could barely contain myself in the six days between my reading the first and my receiving the second in the mail.

For those of us who love the genre, let us hope this story finds its way onto film.

This book is awfully trash, the first is readble but this one stinks, the main caracter sucks, he's not a man but a type of Rambo, or better an antizombie conan and rest...the rest are simply the rest...the end is horrible, i will pray to god for this trash never seen the light on film.

Ignoring some of the crass racial undertones, I was hoping to be impressed, and for Barnhart to redeem himself here. However the book doesn't demonstrate any improvements on the original story and there isn't anything really substantive in the first book other than the promise of an emerging author finding his voice. This effort just felt like something quickly put together, stuffed in an envelope and then sent to the publisher. The series' potential is wasted by laziness and apathy. I think the book holds up well enough as a sequel to the first, but sadly that isn't granting it a whole lot. Camp fiction fans might like this in the same way they to watch bad horror movies on cable. Serious horror fans, who are attuned to the intricacies of Anne Rice et al will be as receptive to this as one is to pofessional wrestling or tractor pulls.

This book is useful for creative writing students in determining what sort of pitfalls in plot development, characterization, and mechanics to avoid. I'm judging this based on subjective elements that make a novel worthwhile to me; my viewpoint apparently doesn't apply to everyone, given some good reviews I've read about this work. I'd consider any work that gets published as a "draft" an ambiguous blessing to its author: on the one hand, it's a milestone, on the other, the remaining bodies of a writer's work will be judged on the first impression. Genre books will always find an audience, and this book (and its companion novels) fall solidly within that category. This story is engaging and works well but needs serious revisions to the aforementioned elements to be considered "good".

This book had a lot wrong with it. It's like reading some nonesense that people post on their web pages for fun or something. Everything about it insulted my intelligence. I didn't read the first book but, even so, I don't think it would have enhanced my enjoyment of this one. As horror fiction and zombie fiction go, I've read some pretty bad books in the past, but this one ranks at the bottom of the pile in my opinion.

Jim Workman returns as our hero in this excellent sequel to "Reign of the Dead." The story begins approximately a year following the end of the previous tale, and no new survivors have been found. All the characters from the previous novel have pretty much been living in limbo, content to still be alive and merely waiting to see what happens next. Jim is convinced that there are more survivors, due to a weak radio signal received, and thus sets out to find them. Jim does indeed find other survivors, in addition to something he didn't bargain for. Due to Jim's curiosity, the refugees' safe haven within the Mount Weather complex is potentially compromised by some surviving neo-nazi terrorists who see this as their opportunity for world domination. In addition to the zombie threat that still persists, the survivors must also battle against this hideous hate group for their right to live.

If you read the first of the series, "Reign of the Dead," and enjoyed that Romero-esque novel, then you will enjoy this one even more. It's truly a great zombie tale. I must admit that I was extremely irritated with the many editing errors present in the first book, but I was able to overlook that and see the story for what it was; simply a great addition to the genre. I will say that the writing and editing improved tremendously in this second book, and that made the reading experience much more enjoyable. It is true that character development takes a back seat to the action, but that seems fitting as the characters were more thoroughly developed in the previous book.

The story maintains the same page-turning pace that is prevalent in Barnhart's previous novel, and can be easily digested in one sitting. Nothing in this book is superfluous, nor is anything unbelievable (as far as zombie fiction goes). The back of the book professes that "all questions are answered" and that is very much the truth. If you are a fan of the horror and/or zombie genre, then you should definitely purchase this series. If you've already devoured the first book, then you should be itching to find out what happens next, and you won't be dissapointed!

Mr. Barnhart's writing has improved considerably with this sequel to "Reign of the Dead". I really like that Barnhart sets his stories in the world created by George Romero; many fans of Romero's Dead trilogy think it would make for a great television series (one that would air on HBO or Showtime with all it's horror and gore intact), and Barnhart's stories fit nicely into that kind of presentation. It's Romero's apocalypse, but here are the stories of some of the other survivors, in different parts of the country. A fun read.

Len Barnhart, Reign of the Dead: Apocalypse End (iUniverse, 2003)

Bernhart's second Reign of the Dead novel picks up not long after the first one ends, with the survivors as safe as they can get in a world populated with the roving, cannibal undead, and lead character Jim Workman getting more and more restless with their relatively sedentary life. A year before the novel opens, the group had received a single transmission from another colony of survivors off the shore of Virginia before their radio equipment gave up the ghost. He wants to go find them, while others in the colony argue against the mission.

The book suffers intermittently from the second-novel blahs; even though the character development in the first novel was rudimentary, Barnhart seemed to lose direction during the periods in Apocalypse End where he didn't have any of it to do. The pace is also a bit less hectic than it is in the first, and that leads to areas where the book has the potential to drag. Barnhart avoids the traps most of the time, but not always. This is in no way to imply it's a bad book; for a vanity publication, judging by those I've read, it's way above the bar-- but realize you're getting a vanity-published book. Think about it this way-- if you can listen to bootlegs of your favorite bands and be thrilled, you might not have any problems with vanity press books. If the recording quality of bootlegs sends you up the wall, you may want to avoid them. ***

The title is the crux of it. This is a slight improvement over Reign of the Dead, mostly due to editing and for the fact that the human enemies in this book actually are worth mentioning as key roleplayers in the story, as opposed to the pathetic preacher in the first book.

Still tons of plot holes, simplistic dialogue, and more of the "uber" leading man, who reveals he was in the Navy SEALs, no less. I get the feeling the author inserted this tidbit after probably getting some comments that he was just a bit too studly. So he was a Navy SEAL-ahhh, that would explain it all.

There are a TON of coincidences in this book, almost cringeworthy in the extreme. How convenient is it that our main character meets up with the militia on his way to the coast? The timing of them crossing paths is pretty impressive. How convenient that he meets up with another character AT the coast? Once again the timing of it and just missing a helocopter crash is incredible. How amazing is it that our main character is flying over the spot where his girlfriend is fighting off undead? Once again, timing is everything. Finally, how incredibly odd and convenient it is that we discover the brother of one of the minor characters is not only still alive (when approximately 7.3 million people residing in Virginia died during the zombie holocaust) but is also grouped up a with the enemies of our main group-plus he is the spy sent to the island our main character ends up on? And how do they figure out who he is? He has the same last name as this minor character...which is Smith. WOW! Thank God it wasn't a really common last name! Otherwise they might have never...oh, never mind.

I like the idea of the human race struggling to survive against horrendous odds and this tale does display that happening here. I like the conflict between different groups-one of which is power hungry and desires to create a new world order. But the bad guys are caricatures of typical morons. I was honestly surprised the main baddy could even tie his own shoes, let alone lead troops into battle with some of his dimwitted ideas and actions. If it were the real world, he would have accidentally shot himself with his service revolver while cleaning it.

The ending sequence is ok, but I think the final act was done for shock value, as if the author felt he needed something to slap the audience in the face rather than just let the story end in a less reckless fashion. Not that it was implausible...for that I look at the absolutely unnecessary "visions" of two of the female characters and the equally unnecessary dream sequences they have.

So why 3 stars? Because this book was ok for all its flaws (well, as a genre book at least). I do feel the examination of the why? related to the zombies and how they came about was somewhat interesting. Every author and movie maker has carte blanche to do this since Romero basically made it a mystery (for the most part) as to why it happened or could happen. This author tries to make sense of it with a scientist doing research on the problem. The story moves forward and is driven more by a few select characters as opposed to the movement of a larger group from one place to another so you can focus on specific things more so than the first book.

As I said with the first book, the author possibly has potential and might improve with future works. This one is not great, but it is a slight improvement over REIGN. I am a big fan of zombie fiction so I can enjoy something that is not spectacular, but I would not recommend this one for anyone who is not a huge fan of the genre.

This was an excellent book so was the sequel and can't wait for the 3rd book to come out. I could not put this book down, it took me 2 days to finish reading and then I read it again. Being a zombie movie fan (The original Dawn of the Dead, is my favorite), when I read this book it reminded me of all of George Romero's movies From Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead to even now Land of the Dead. Of course, Len Bernhart is a Fan of George Romero, its like a tribute to him. I definitely recommed this book to anyone who is a true zombie fan.