Customer Reviews

The Rage Plague

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Well I picked up this book at my local Bookstore, intrigued of the idea of a Zombie story in Chicago (my home city) Figuring the unique challenges of a large Midwestern city (as opposed to the stereotypical Manhattan, which is easily cut off from the mainland with a few downed bridges and tunnels) Instead the story seemed to just knock off every major Zombie flick out there, the original Day of the Dead, the Dawn of the Dead Remake the the 28 Days/Weeks movies.

I'm also sick of the stereotypical "evil Army" sub plot, which raises the "philosophical" (please notice the instant sarcasm quotes)question of who is really the monster us or the zombies? *YAWN*

Not to mention the author doesn't seem to know anything about the military, switching between Marine and Army lingo/labels, spelling issues and confusion (the rank of Sergeant Major is capitalized, and is NOT the same as Major)and soldiers in boot camp are not called cadets. because of this I was actually confused for several chapters (where is that Major? why is the Sergeant Major in charge now?) Oh duh, they are the same character) Maybe the average Joe who reads the story might not notice, but for someone who has been in the military, these mistakes are glaring, and hard to miss.

I also noticed many spelling mistakes.

I also mentioned my excitement as the story takes place in and around Chicago, but with the exception of "name dropping" of a few locations, you wouldn't know, in fact, the story mentions the characters taking the highway at one point. Overall i was dissatisfied with the book, I would recommend a more "classic" World War Z over this.

Added note: It seems the author has some issues, just about every female in the book (named character or random victim) has their breasts described, sometimes in a level of uncomfortable detail that I had to look behind me to make sure nobody thought I was reading some sort of romance novel. Also rape is brought up a lot, and not in some way that psychologically effects a character, it just a female, rape, murder done, next. add it for shock value once, twice maybe, everything beyond that is just sheer perversion.

Rage virus? Animal experimentation? Mean soldiers? Hordes of the infected? Sounds a lot like 28 Days Later. Only that movie was good. This book does not live up the hype created by the five star reviews. The writing was below average, the characters were superficial and irritating, and the plot was underwhelming. I was really disappointed by this book. Read something by Brian Keene instead if you want fun zombie horror.

I was somewhat...disappointed by this book. First, I have about 15 books by this author on my BookMooch wishlist that I have never purchased. One, because they are expensive and two, because there are so many, apparently they are a series, and I don't know what order they are supposed to be in. Hardly anyone gives up zombie books on BookMooch, so I sit and wait.

When this book became available, I mooched it right away, VERY eager to read it. I mean, after all, there's zombies, right? Not exactly. These were not shambling zombies, they are more of the 28 Days, mad, driven variety....not my favorite type of zombie.

I found the story stilted, not full, and rather juvenile. There is an interesting take on the "zombie" situation that I will not ruin for anyone else, but I do prefer my zombies stupid and shambling.

In addition, the plot reads nearly EXACLTY like both Hater by David Moody and 28 Days Later. There is nothing new here, and both Hater and 28 Days were WAY better.

Second, I don't think I would pay cold hard cash for his other books if they are like this one. I would definitely READ them if I got them on BookMooch (book swapping site), but I wouldn't purchase them.

I gave this three stars only because it sort of had zombies in it.

I wanted to like this book, I really did. I love zombie stories, as a matter of fact I often blindly take a chance on a new author. But this book is nearly unreadable. I struggled to just get through it. Almost like a young teen might have written it, very childish. The author obviously knows nothing about being in the military and what it means to serve your country, which is fine, but my question is: Why wouldn't you take the time to research it?

My advice to anyone thinking of purchasing this book: Avoid it and go with something else from Permuted Press. I purchased another title from this author and I really hope it is a better product. If that is not the case, I would advise Permuted Press to drop this author.

I'll make this short and to the point. These are some of the nauseating lines from the book that I couldn't stomach anymore.

"Her smile grew wider"

"Bill smiled"

"She smiled sweetly at them"

"Bill nodded and grinned"

"Bill chuckled"

And my favorite is all the "grinning from ear to ear" that the characters do in this book, usually right after someone close to them is horribly killed.

And what was the deal with Elizabeth? She was so distraught over losing Bruce, who she only knew a few days, that she commits suicide by opening the door and putting everybody else in danger. I could think of a lot of other ways to kill myself without hurting the people who saved me.

It just seemed to me that the characters were having such a good time within minutes of someone dying or narrowly escaping danger.

The other thing that defied logic was the plane crash that seemed to take forever to happen. Bill and his merry band of survivors were able to run blocks before the plane crashed right behind them. Kind of made me wonder why they didn't stay put in the first place and let the plane fly over the top of them.

I know this wasn't short like I said it was going to be, but once I started I found it hard to stop.

Avoid this book unless you like shallow characters, thin plot and lots of smiling, laughing, chuckling and grinning.

There is not a wealth of good "zombie" books out there. There are some, but you really need to weed through them.

This book is one I'd rather not have read. It started out well and the story had some high points, but it degenerated into predictable patterns. "I sure hope someone can fly a plane!" Of course, in the little band someone could. "We need a distration!" Not once, not twice, but three times one was provided. Almost as if by saying it, it became a reality.

Every time there was a mention of a contingency, it came to pass. On the whole, the author asked us to suspend belief time and time again. It was a little much. And would it be so hard for someone writing about Chicago and the Military to have actually done a little research into either? Midway is located in the city of Chicago and no where near the lake front. A sergeant-major's rank does not fall in the officer corps. Please, if you are going to write a book, do the research!

This book was a major waste of time and money, rather than getting this book, buy a decent hammer and give yourself a good whack on the head. You will feel much less pain from the latter action. This read has shocked me out of my zombie phase.

Though I am by no means an expert on writing, I do know what a well written story is. Some reviewers have said this novel was horrible and don't waste your time, I'd say, it was okay. My big problem with the whole way it was written was I never connected with any of the characters. The action was there, the writing style was okay, but for me to really care about the people I'm reading about, the author has to care about them. I didn't get that sense. As a reader, I felt that I was being pushed along the story line and not a willing participant, because I really didn't give a crap if the main character died or not. Everything was forced and didn't flow. I could get passed the spelling errors, but when I'm having to struggle to care about those I'm reading about, the novel becomes like a slasher film where the only point to it is to see blood and guts and tits. The potential is there for this novel but because it has no teeth, I won't read anything from this author.

I have to say that I will pretty much read anything zombie/infected themed out there. It doesnt matter if the dead have risen from up out of the earth, or come from a test tube, its fair game to me. The Rage Plague is a book that starts us off after humans have been infected by something, and turned them all into raging lunatics out to kill us. A group of survivors is on a roof of a school and they know they cannot stay there for long. These survivors are immune to this virus/infection, although they dont know how or why.

Bill, an older man, quickly becomes the groups leader. Mike, the young angry man in the group quickly becomes an outsider heck bent on making Bill and his group pay. the rest of the bunch is made up over older and younger women, teenagers, middle age men and some kids. They need to find a place to finally be safe, while avoiding be torn to pieces. The characters are your typical "whats left of society" hodge podge. I wasnt to impressed by their character development throughout.

Amoung the Infected is a man, Dean, who has the virus but has maintained his intellegence. Which reminded me of the book Monster Island: A Zombie Novel where a man named Gary figures out a way to retain his brain functions even after he is of the undead.

Insert into the story the military, holing up in a giant laboratory, conspiracy theories about where the virus came from, and lots of blowing up of things and that pretty much sums this book up. Was I entertained?, Yes, did it introduce a new level of zombie/infected fiction? Not really. I enjoyed it for what it was, a quick story about some survivors and a smelly hoard of creatures trying to get at them.

I recommend it to any lover of horror short stories, but not to anyone looking for the next Brian Keene or Kim Paffenroth novel.

From start to finish this book has people smiling, laughing, giggling, chuckling, and grinning from the first page to the very last page.

Even though the main characters are constantly on the run from zombies and from the EVIL military, they always are smiling. Must be that horrible plague that is infecting everyone! To heck with the zombies, this is the real danger!

What's the strangest thing about this book is that the author seems to really have no concept of physics or gravity whatsoever. A plane falling from the sky literally takes 10 minutes to crash into the ground from a cruising altitude. And what's even crazier is that it must have been carrying a nuclear warhead because when it crashes it destroys almost an entire city. I really have no idea how the author thinks this is what happens when a plane crashes.

Another strange event is one of the children (obviously modeled after the author's own son), is 14 years old and knows how to make pipe bombs. Yep, you heard me right, a 14 year old knows how to make pipe bombs. And what's crazier is the author claims the characters can get the materials for making these pipe bombs with steel pipes and scraping the heads off of matches. You'd need an entire CRATE of matches before you'd have enough material to make a single pipe bomb this way.

Something else that is a running theme in this book (as well as the rest of Giangregorio's books), is the constant raping and sexual assault of women. Many of the women in this book are portrayed as weak willed damsel in distress types in constant need of rescuing. Also many of the men in this book are shown to want to dominate women in every sense of the word and use them for their own gratification whenever they feel like it and then cast them aside when they are done.

It really says something about the author as a person that he feels the need to put this in practically every book he writes.

I was going to wrote a very in-depth detail oriented review of this book but these are the highlights, so this should do for anyone wanting to waste their time and money with this book.

Don't bother even thinking twice about this one, look for something worth your time to read.