Customer Reviews

The Down Home Zombie Blues

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3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Bahia Vista ( Florida ) Homicide Detective Sergeant Theophilus Theo Petrakos thought he had witnessed everything. But that was before he walked into a residential crime scene to find a mummified corpse and a lap top unlike anything he has ever seen. When Theo finally returns to his home, he is attacked by what look like some sort of futuristic zombie. He is rescued by a lovely woman outfitted with an array of high-tech weaponry. Before the night is over Theo learns that the corpse and the lap top are just the beginning of a sci-fi movie gone bad.

Commander Jorie Mikkalah and her team are with the Guardian Force. When communications from a hunter agent cease, they beam down to Earth to find out why. They learn that the agent is dead; killed by a zombie. These zombies, originally created about two hundred years ago, were a mech-organic entity produced by her own government to help with space traffic. They were designed to operate in small herds, all under the control of the C-Prime, the largest zombie. Commands were issued to the C-Prime by her people, who then prodded the herds to work. If a herd member was destroyed, the C-Prime made another. But then a flawed program upgrade turned them into monsters. To fix this error, the Guardians hunt down the zombies. Problem is that the herd on Earth is far larger than any noted in history. Even worse, this herd is not only growing larger in bodies, but they are becoming more intelligent! It is Jories job to find out how and why, then to terminate the three hundred, or more, zombies on the planet without the nils (Earthlings) finding out that they are not alone in the universe. Success will gain her a captaincy.

Murphys Law kicks in immediately. The agent is dead and a nil, with weaponry training, is attacked by a zombie. Unable to let Theo remain on his planet and tell others about visiting aliens, Theo is beamed to the ship and readied for exile. To get back to Earth, Theo makes a deal. Theo allows them to implant a security device within him. Then he goes with Jorie and a hunting team back to Earth to complete Jories mission. With their agent dead, Theos knowledge of his area and people are vital to ensure success. But neither Theo, nor Jorie, expected to become attracted to each other.

***** Do not let the title fool you. These are not like the dead, brain eating zombies from horror movies. These creatures are more like the Borg from Star Trek the Next Generation. Trekkies and Jedi fans will be delighted with this story. There is a bit of romance, but most of the focus is on the plot. An engaging space episode that will engage the imaginations of readers for a long time to come! *****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

I adore this book! The name had me wondering what it was about, and thankfully I bought it! This is a fun and terrifying story with unforgettable characters in which author Linnea Sinclair has chosen our Solar System for this fabulous adventure. Imagine being a detective leaving a crime scene where a recently deceased man looked like a dry husk similar to a body left in the desert for 6 months. Then find yourself fighting off a monster from your darkest nightmare with the most beautiful woman that you had ever seen appearing and helping to destroy the creature that could not possibly exist! Then it really gets exciting! The Down Home Zombie Blues is a perfect blend of sci-fi, humor, adventure, love, treachery, and courage that I have read in a LONG time. I want more!
Susiq2, Reviewer, Cata Network Romance

Linnea Sinclair--one of the most acknowledged and well-received authors in scifi romance today--has done it again. Down Home Zombie Blues has all the hallmarks I look for in these kinds of books; a bit of humor, good world building and characters I can care about. Fold those in with another engaging plot from Sinclair and I'm ready to settle down with a great read. It came as no surprise when I was drawn straight in from chapter one.

Commander Jorie Mikkalah has given her all to keep her people safe against their enemies as a member of the Interplanetary Marines. Years later, she's now a member of the Guardian Force--an elite group dedicated to wiping out a biochemical threat. Zombies are using Earth as a breeding ground, and the herd is unlike any her and her team have encountered. They need information on the herd in order to destroy it, but nothing goes right from the start in balmy Florida. Soon Jorie's mission is on the verge of being compromised and is literally in the hands of one very handsome and noble cop, Theo Petrakos. When the cop becomes a prisoner in his own home, and at the hands of one exotically beautiful woman, he's not handing over the reins without a fight. He means to prove his value to Jorie and is soon more valuable than he knew possible when she ends up stranded. Much is at stake--a possible promotion for Jorie, Theo's career, Earth's very safety and the security of the entire universe. Jorie and Theo band together to keep a deadly enemy from gaining a foothold on both Earth and in the wide reaches of space.

Theo and Jorie's romance was palpable from their first meeting. Circumstances being what they are though, there's also a good buildup of sexual tension between the two that carries well throughout the book's suspenseful atmosphere. This reader was brought to the brink of doubt--doubt that their mission would ever succeed--many times, only to be well pleased at the tenacity with which Jorie strives to complete it. At times I wished that the pacing would pick up a little and would rather have seen some action where there was down time for the main characters, but overall the story flowed well and kept me interested for the next chapter. What was very impressive to me was Ms. Sinclair's amazing world building, which she did for an entirely new culture, but smack dab on everyday, current Earth. I got a clear sense of Jorie's people and their culture even though it's discussed and shown with the backdrop of suburban neighborhoods and your average family park and shopping areas. By book's end, it's clear Theo has found his match in the strong and intelligent Jorie Mikkalah and how their story is tied up was both sweet and satisfying. Sinclair demonstrates once again with "The Down Home Zombie Blues" how well she has a handle on not only science fiction, but steamy, fulfilling romance as well. Looking forward to her next one!

While Down Home Zombie Blues is somewhat different from some of Linnea's other books, it does have her signature "kick butt" heroine, hot hero and lots of laughs and fun--not to mention a wild ride adventure.

I love "fish out of water" stories and DHZB delivers that in spades. I love the fact that she stepped outside the usual, let her imagination rip and delivered a down home fun, very wild ride.

I hope she'll revisit this world sometime in the future--but then I want sequels of all her books.

Christmas in Bahia Vista, Florida was not shaping up to be very merry for Homicide Detective Sergeant Theo Patrakos. On top of having to endure the matchmaking efforts of his friends after his divorce from the beautiful and faithless Camille, the suspicious death of one Dan J. Wayne has him completely baffled. Never before had he seen a mummified corpse with moist eyeballs. Even in this subtropical environment it would take weeks for a body to mummify and witnesses had seen the victim alive two days ago. More puzzling was the strange technological equipment found in the victims dwelling. Hopefully once he got the peculiar looking laptop to the station he'd have some answers. But things got a lot more complicated after he made a short detour to his own home.

It's been two days since the Guardian Force of the Chalvash Interplanetary Concord stationed on the spaceship Sakanah received communication from their zombie tracker, Danjay Wain on the nil-tech world named after dirt. Fearing the worst, Commander Jorie Mikkalah and her team are sent down to investigate. Following Wain's T-MOD unit's signal leads them to an Earth dwelling, the home of Theo Patrakos. Before Jorie can recover the unit, the signal triggers a zombie attack and Theo finds himself transported back to their spaceship along with the aliens.

Because Jorie can speak Vekran, which is closely translatable to English, Theo soon learns of the new threat to his world. Jorie is no stranger to warfare after six years of fighting with the Interplanetary Marines during the Tresh Border Wars, but that is nothing compared to what they are facing with the zombies. Zombies are mech-organic entities produced by her government to monitor commercial traffic in the spacelanes for viral contaminants and defend the Hatches. They operated in herds directed by the largest, the C-Prime. But either through natural mutation or enemy tampering the zombies had been altered and no longer accepted orders from the Guardians. They had become monsters drawn to the life force of soft-fleshed sentients. Jorie stands to win a captaincy if she can eliminate the threat. But the worst thing he learns is that if he cannot convince Jorie and her Captain to send him back, his world will have to face the menace without him. Nope there's no flashy thing to erase his memory. If things go according to regulations he's about to be forcibly relocated to Paroo, a paradise world to be sure, but as they say there's no place like home.

Although Captain Pietr has serious doubts about Jorie's suspicions of enemy involvement, he allows her to return with Theo and her team to investigate and resolve the zombie situation. It doesn't take long before Theo's faith in beautiful women has been restored while Jorie learns that a Nil with a "very good face" can also be courageous warrior. Now with more than a mere promotion vested in their success, she will do whatever it takes to save his world and the love of her life.

With Jorie's ex-lover Lorik feeding Pietr's skepticism, one teammate vying for the captainship and her affections while the other is recovering from the debilitating effects of an enemy implant, and Theo's busybody neighbor and well meaning friends and relatives always checking up on them, this unlikely couple has their work cut out for them. Fortunately Earth isn't lacking for heroes to help save the day, once they are clued in that Jorie is from a little further north than Canada of course.

Realistic characters, romance, humor, conflict and suspense, what more could a paranormal fan ask for in a sf/futuristic novel? Hm, well a little mood music perhaps, but then Ms. Sinclair has that covered as well. Readers of THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES can listen to the song by the same name by visiting the author's website. Very Cool! This read is a keeper. --- Reviewed for PNR Reviews

Theo Petrakos is a homicide detective in Bahia Vista and about to go on holiday for Christmas. However he finds himself involved in a case of a mysterious mummified man with an odd laptop and the laptop brings a strange group of people into his life. Jorie Mikkalah is a Guardian Force commander, a group of people who travel the galaxy to defeat the Zombies, drone-like beings who kill indiscriminately. When she realises Theo Petrakos has seen the alien laptop he is taken to their spacecraft to prepare for resettlement - people from low-technology worlds aren't allowed to know about the other races in space. However Theo convinces Jorie that he is needed to provide cover for them when working against the Zombies; although they speak a language which is similar to English there are also many differences. Theo has also proved himself able to fight a Zombie. Jorie and her crew return to the planet with Theo and start working on a machine to call the Zombies so that they can be destroyed. However when the rest of the team disappear Jorie and Theo have to work together with minimal technology in order to try to defeat the group of Zombies, one that they realise has been modified to be more dangerous. Jorie faces frightening aspects of her past as well as the difficulty of being alone on a strange world and attracted to Theo. Theo knows that he must gather more people to help them but is afraid that Jorie will be taken away by the FBI and never seen again. How can they succeed against so many Zombies with so little time and so few weapons and soldiers?

Although this story is billed as a romance the romantic element is subordinate to the overall plot of the fight against the zombies. In some ways, in fact, the romance felt like a very minor aspect. There's little disagreement and misunderstanding between Jorie and Theo, the main course of the romance between them is the difficulties of a cross-cultural relationship of a rather dramatic kind. The book is rather more focused on the fight against the Zombies and the different technology and skills that Jorie brings to Earth. Much is made of the different speech patterns between Jorie's Vekran and Theo's English, clearly a very similar language, and of the interest of Theo's family in his love life.

Although an interesting read this book did drag at times and there were rather too many unrealistic elements to the plotting timeline. It's very much a book for those who like space stories and aliens rather than those looking for a straight romance. All the characters were well drawn and interesting although we didn't find out very much about many of the 'baddies' but the story could have benefited from tighter writing in places.

Originally published for Curled Up With A Good Book © Helen Hancox 2008

If I had to compile a short-list of three nominations for the science fiction writer who has improved most over the past two years, "Games of Command" would have earned Linnea Sinclair a place on it and this book would have put her at the top.

The title, and particularly the word "Zombies," is misleading. This is Sci-Fi, not horror. The basis of the plot is that soldiers from an advanced civilisation in another galaxy come to earth to eliminate a group of rogue monsters hiding on our planet, before the monsters can become a greater threat to all intelligent life and incidentally wipe out the human race in the process.

The monsters, despite being called "zombies" are nothing like what we usually associate with that word: they are not re-animated dead people. They are artificial biomechanical organisms which were originally created to check interstellar ships and travellers for disease. These Zombies started out like automated cyborg customs Health & Infectious Disease Control inspectors. Unfortunately an upgrade designed to give them more autonomy went radically wrong. The Zombies stopped accepting any orders at all, became killers, and started reproducing like rabbits anywhere they could hide and obtain food.

At the start of this book a contingent of "Guardians" led by Commander Jorie Mikkalah arrives on a primitive planet in another galaxy "named by its inhabitants after dirt" to hunt a herd of Zombies. Their civilisation had put an agent on the planet to carry out an initial investigation of the zombies but the agent has stopped communicating and they are afraid that the zombies may have found and killed him.

Meanwhile Detective Sergeant Theo Petrakos, in charge of a homicide team for the Bahia Vista police in Florida, has just started to investigate the most peculiar case of his life. The victim has been mummified but has a wrecked flat full of strange high-tech equipment such as a laptop with a screen with readouts in an alphabet which nobody recognises.

On his way home Theo wonders what sort of attack leaves a man who was alive two days ago looking like he's been dead for a thousand years and what sort of victim has a computer which looks like it's from 200 years in the future. But if he thinks the night has started out strange it's about to get much worse ...

Because the people of earth know nothing about the Zombies and the Guardians know nothing about Earth, circumstances soon force Theo and Jorie to work together to try to stop the Zombies. This also gives them a lot of explaining to do with their colleagues and superiors.

The "Guardians" tracking the Zombies are may be trying to save our world but they are also ruthless and more than a little prejudiced against people from less technologically-advanced planets. And how is Theo going to explain to his boss that the world is threatened by monsters from outer space and he is working with a group of aliens to stop them, without getting put in a mental hospital?

And as if that isn't bad enough, Jorie has reason to suspect that this particular group of Zombies may be even more dangerous than her fellow Guardians believe - but none of them take her concerns seriously ...

The character development, storyline, good use of humour, and gradual development of both dramatic and romantic tension are all first rate. It's a very entertaining read.

Linnea Sinclair's first few sci-fi romance novels started out as entertaining nonsense and improved to highly entertaining nonsense. They won a quite a few awards and award nominations because they were great fun to read, although the science fiction element of the novels was not first rank Sci-fi and the romance element was not exactly Jane Austen.

However, with "Games of Command" (2007), Sinclair managed to jump up a gear in the quality of her plots and character development, and "The Down Home Zombie Blues" jumps up another gear. If she keeps improving at this rate the award nominations she can list may begin to include Hugos and Nebulas.

That's not to say there are not still some silly aspects to the book. This time it is grossly improbable similarities between cultures from different galaxies which are never properly explained. For example, characters in the book from different worlds in different galaxies manage to look sufficiently similar to feel romantic attraction.

English turns out to be so like Vekran, one of the four galactic languages spoken by the Guardians, that they can use Vekran to communicate with the characters from Earth, though not always perfectly - one of the funniest moments in the book, through presumably by accident, is when one of the Guardians starts sounding like Yoda at an inappropriate moment. "Serious injury, she has!"

More of the most amusing sections of the book, this time intentionally, come when Theo quotes to Jorie a few words from "Star Trek." The first time she tells him that nobody can travel as fast as Warp Factor Ten, and the second time "If you must quote Vekran sacred texts, get them right!"

No attempt is made to provide a remotely plausible explanation for these similarities: we're told that a Vekran missionary ship went missing not far from Earth fifty years ago. The explicit inference is that one of the missionaries visited this planet and made some comments which found their way into "Star Trek" scripts, but that still does not explain why English is like Vekran or why people who appear to be descended from evolutionary trees on half a dozen different planets look the same.

Overall, however, this is an excellent read and I recommend it.

If you are interested in reading some of Linnea Sinclair's other books, they include

"Winterfair" (originally published under the name Megan Sybil Baker)
"Finders Keepers"
"Gabriel's Ghost"
"An Accidental Goddess"
"Games of Command" (which is a vastly improved rewrite of a book first published as "Command Performance".)

Linnea Sinclair combines the best of Science Fiction and Romance to create a story that rocks! I've been reading her for years and never been disappointed.

In Down Home Zombie Blues she brings a squad of outer space zombie hunters to Earth where they connect with a local police detective while trying to eliminate an imminent threat to mankind.

These Zombies are not your typical horror movie clichés. They are biomechanical organisms who were originally created to solve a problem, but whose programming has been corrupted causing them to become a threat to human life.

The need for secrecy creates some interesting plot twists and the romantic elements add some spice to the story as the female leader of the space Guardian Force and the Florida Detective struggle against forbidden attraction set against the backdrop of possible annihilation of life on Earth.

I loved this book and hope Linnea will set more stories in this fascinating universe.

Linnea Sinclair has done it again. Jorie is a Guardian sent to destroy high tech super monsters and, incidentally, save Earth. She gets stranded on Earth with only a local town cop to help her.

Non-stop action and interesting character interaction make this a book that's hard to put down. It's a sexy scifi story I will read again and again (while I wait for Sinclair's next book)

Bahia Vista, Florida Homicide Detective Sergeant Theophilus "Theo" Petrakos is stunned to find a mummified corpse near a strange looking laptop. Not long after he leaves the crime scene, what seems like a zombie attacks him, Commander Jorie Mikkalah of the Guardian Force saves his life.

Jorie and her squad came to earth when they lost contact with a hunter agent stationed here. Apparently a zombie killed their agent. Her government created these monsters two centuries ago to control space traffic until a flaw in the programming turned them from HERO into killing mechs. The Guardians hunt them down, but here on Earth is the largest herd of zombies that has ever been reported; worse they are also the most intelligent found so far. Jorie must perform Intel to learn how before destroying the Three Hundred without the local humans nils learning of either of them. Still since Theo does Jorie drafts him to help on their mission before taking him back with her as he cannot be allowed to tell his people about them. Neither the cop nor the commander expected to fall in love while fighting THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES.

This is a terrific science fiction with the zombies nothing like those in the Romero universe; instead they are the result of bad technology and work as a cohesive unit. The story line is action-packed from the moment that the Floridian detective finds the corpse and the weird computer and never slows down until the final moment; yet there is much humor especially as the Guardian Force troops struggle to adapt to Florida's way of life so that the locals do not know they are not of this world. Enhancing the superb thriller is that the romance between the nils and the alien is low-key as both know their priorities. Perhaps the only item left for Linnea Sinclair to answer is whether the zombies voted Republican in 2000.

Harriet Klausner