Days with the Undead: Book One [Kindle Edition]

Julianne Snow (Author), Kate Monroe (Editor)

Book Description

It’s a journal of survival.

Five people set out to escape the growing tide of the Undead after they arose too close to home. Immerse yourself in the emotional and physical struggle as you join our survivors on the third day after the re-awakening of Brooks VanReit, as they are recorded from the point of view of Julie, a former pathologist and part-time survivalist. Each entry is geared toward helping those who want to help themselves and maybe give a few that don’t a swift kick in the ass.

Join our group of survivors on their journey through these Days with the Undead.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

It was watching Romero's Night of the Living Dead at the tender age of 6 that solidified Julianne’s respect of the Undead. Since that day, she has been preparing herself for the (inevitable) Zombie Apocalypse. While classically trained in all of the ways to defend herself, she took up writing in order to process the desire she now covets; to bestow a second and final death upon the Undead, As the only girl growing up in a family with four children in the Canadian countryside, Julianne needed some form of escape. Her choice was the imaginations of others which only fostered the vibrancy of her own. The horror and forensic/crime thriller genres top her list of favourites, but she can never turn down a good science fiction, fantasy or mystery read. Julianne appears in the anthology Women of the Living Dead with a story entitled The Living Dead at Penderghast Manor. Look for her short stories in future anthologies. Days with the Undead: Book One is her first full-length book, the basis of which can be found in her popular web serial of the same name.

Product Details

• File Size: 426 KB
• Print Length: 272 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Sirens Call Publications (February 27, 2012)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B007F14OTA
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #177,694 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just another zombie book. November 18, 2012

By Eddie Rotten

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

The best part about this book is that BOOK ONE is part of the title. I'm so happy that there's more to come with this one. As a zombie book and movie connoisseur, I was genuinely impressed with the tempo of the story. Enough character description to make you 'feel' compassion for them. And the horror of survival in the apocalypse was written skillfully, and eerily. Almost like she experienced it and time traveled back to warn us! I really don't want to give anything away, but expect to bite your nails off, and keep the tissue handy. One of the few (and I do mean few) stories that would cross over to the screen quite well. Well done. Two bloody fists way way up! Best gift I got in a long time and I passed it on.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Different take on the popular zombie genre February 7, 2013

By Matthew Schiariti

Format:Kindle Edition

A handful of survivalists. They'd always joked about the idea of using their skills to flee hordes of the undead. When it actually happens, they find it's no longer a laughing matter. Welcome to the journal of Julie, pathologist and part-time survivalist, as she chronicles the events of nearly a month as she and her eclectic band of friends journey from Canada, through the United States, and back again, always trying to stay one step away from throngs of the Undead. If you're out there and you happen upon her blog, you may want to pay attention. It may just save your life.

Zombie novels are the latest craze in genre fiction these days. There are literally hordes (pardon the pun) of them coming out nearly every day. I imagine it's easy for some of them to get swallowed (pardon the pun AGAIN!) by the sheer numbers being released. Days With The Undead should stand out as something a little bit different.

It's told in the first person. That's nothing new, but what gives Days a different flavor (need I say it?) is that it's told entirely as a sequential series of blog entries. The book opens up on Day 3, after the Undead begin to take over the city of Toronto. Julie and her friends/fellow survivalists are already fleeing the city. They are, for the most part, on their own. The government isn't doing anything, the news isn't reporting anything about it. She takes it upon herself to start the blog as a means to educate the masses: Yes, this is happening. No, we're not crazy. Please, run. The journal takes the reader on a broad journey as the group travel across boarders and states, always staying one step ahead of the undead masses.

One thing in particular that makes this a bit different is that there is no dialogue. Zero. The entries are all 'written' by Julie's hand, as she experiences them. It was a little strange at first; a book with no dialogue? But here, it works. It lends a serious and dire quality to the book. It's as if we're traveling with her, experiencing everything she does right along with her. Being a book centering around the animated dead, the experiences are dark and horrifying. Do they stop and help the hapless people they run into or do they opt for self preservation? What will they do when they encounter strangers? Fight or flight? What CAN they do to help people who won't even help themselves? Julie and her band have to make some important and heart breaking decisions. This isn't a book about fuzzy bunnies, that's for sure.

I liked Snow's style. It flows well and there's just enough detail to describe the surroundings without being overly wordy. The more gory aspects of the novel are handled in a way that's just right; not too gratuitous, but just brutal enough. This isn't a book about vivid blood and guts. It's about the trials and tribulations of the main character and what she and her friends go through as they live through hell, day in, day out, for nearly a month.

I did have a few issues though. In the early goings, I found the lack of any type of government or military response to be a little bit beyond belief. The limited perspective tones that down however, because Julie and her group just don't know what's going on and are too busy fleeing for their lives every hour of every day to stop and ask. Also, I found a little bit of repetition with certain phrases. Not a deal breaker, but I did notice it. Also, because there is no dialogue, it took a little while for me to get into it. In the interest of full disclosure, I was going to rate this a 3.5...

...and then I got to the ending. Something happens that made me see everything I'd read up to that point in a new light. I won't give spoilers, but it's definitely a twist that I didn't see coming, and that bumped it back up to a solid 4 stars. While I won't give it away, I will say the author doesn't 'pull a fast one' and it makes perfect sense, thus giving the ending a very satisfying quality.

Kudos to Snow for doing things a bit different (a novella with no dialogue) and taking the path less traveled.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars The Dead rise (as a twitter topic) November 7, 2012

By JMS

Format:Kindle Edition

In the pages of Julianne Snow's novella Days with the Undead: Book One , no aspect of the Zombie Apocalypse goes unexplored.
In this 143 page (on Kindle) extended short, Snow creates drama and pathos in situations as familiar to horror fans as the local multiplex, and she dissects and reveals each aspect of the Zombie film litany and examines it in turn.
Her heroine, Julie starts as just your average Toronto health care worker, at least until the beginning of the end begins. When it does, her and her companions decided it is more noble to flee to Michigan than to be eaten in Ontario. Thus begins a harrowing, sometimes mysterious journey from Canada's eastern seaboard to America's heartland. And, after surviving the usual zombie madness, the book's heroine tells us about her exploits with the most recognizable way possible in the information age. She blogs about it.
An interesting hybrid of survival story, travelogue and motif examination, Days with the Undead brings us to a territory, while well worn, is also surprising with its willingness to explore how the mechanics of a zombie outbreak would proceed in a population center (or should that be centre?) like Toronto. Fans of the genre will be overjoyed to read of Julies' musings on such familiar themes as herds, crawlers and even the now-ubiquitous idea of a Patient Zero (liberally borrowed from Jonathan Mayberry's World War Z mythos).
Snow leaves no theme unpunished as her not-so-merry band tries to stay ahead of the escalating problems living with the undead. Things in her world get more than a little crazy. Three words of awesomeness for the die-hard zombie lover: Flesh-Eating Chipmunks. And with out giving any spoilers, the story's resolution evokes the gritty hopelessness of such end-of-the-line classics as The Road and On the Beach.
Overall, Days is an fast moving genre read, though the first-person device of the blog makes the narrative a little stiff at times. I also found myself a little confused at slow moving nature of the news about Toronto's zombie outbreak which dominates the story's early chapters. While perhaps a sly commentary on the digital divide in Red State America, I found it broke down the believability of the storyline.
There also are a few plot elements that require some leaps in logic to grasp (IE: people in Europe letting North American travelers enter their shores after they hear news of the outbreak), but, in all honesty, they are nothing out of the ordinary for this kind of "this-is-the-way-the-world-ends" story.
Hopefully, some of these flaws will be addressed in the foreshadowed sequel. But, if you're looking for a quick, hard hitting zombie read, you could do worse than stopping here.

More About the Author

As the only girl growing up in a family with four children in the Canadian countryside, Julianne Snow needed some form of escape. Her choice was the imaginations of others which only fostered the vibrancy of her own. A voracious reader by the age of 7, she tackled the classics along with many others while her friends were reading Pascal's Sweet Valley High series or Stine's Goosebumps books. She devoured King, Koontz, Christopher Pike, Robin Cook, and Marion Zimmer Bradley along with many more.

Her literary loves have expanded to include the works of Ariana Franklin, James Rollins, Gregoire Maguire, Jonathan Mayberry, Jeffrey Deaver, Diana Gabaldon, and Kathy Reichs along with the myriad of talented independently published authors she has discovered and in some cases, befriended. The horror and forensic/crime thriller genres top her list of favorites, but she can never turn down a good science fiction, fantasy or mystery read. Julianne's first full-length foray into the publishing realm follows a group of friends as they attempt to survive their Days with the Undead.