Customer Reviews

Sunset

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

 

 

In a sudden apocalyptic event with no warning, 99% of the world's population dies - instantly. For the 1% who survive, the inexplicable deaths of everyone around them and their new isolation in a dead world are like a nightmare. But forty-eight hours later, the nightmare gets worse when the dead rise and begin to walk. Attracted to light and sound, the mindless zombies instinctively kill any living thing they find.

Sunset is a novel narrating the experiences of several intriguing survivors in various regions of the U.S. - a twenty-something failure-to-launch who worked at a video store in Kansas, a computer programmer enjoying a vacation in Las Vegas, a retired cop in New York City, and a terrorist who was just about to blow up a building, along with himself and thousands of other people, before something pre-empted his act. (I thought it was rather daring to include this character in his line up.) As the survivors come out of their own personal shock and begin to seek other survivors, they find that the living can be more dangerous than the dead.

Given an event that destroys the fabric of civilized society, the violent and immoral individuals immediately rise up and begin to destroy those people still clinging to an illusion of law and order. The mindless zombies are little threat composed to the predatory living humans who have taken up arms against fellow survivors. Although I found Sunset an interesting book, this particular aspect stretched my credibility. One would think that the instinct for species survival would prevent most people from shooting other survivors on sight. I wanted a little more background from the author on this behavior, and I felt that the plot of the book suffered because it was not there.

Sunset is appropriate for adult audiences who enjoy horror, zombies, and stories of a post-apocalyptic world.

Reviewed by Dianne Salerni
For POD Book Reviews and More

I am not a regular reader of horror fiction and would start by saying this is not what I expected from a horror fiction novel. It is set in a world where 98% of the population has been turned into flesh-craving zombies. I expected the book to focus on the survivor's battle against this enemy like so many other zombie-based books or movies do. But, in fact, the author takes this story in a pleasingly different direction. Although the nightly appearance of the zombies plays a significant role throught the story, the zombies become a much less menacing foe to the survivors as the survivors in the story begrudgingly face the reality that they need to turn their energies to protecting themselves from their true antagonist, other survivors. It becomes a story about the struggle of "good" survivors against the brutal tactics of other non-zombified humans who were also spared by the apocalyptic catastrophe that occurred. The story is written from the persective of 3 different survivors and takes you into their approach to living day-to-day in this new world. The author presents two opposing ideas about survival when facing the aftermath of an apocalyptic event and what living in a world without law and order means to different types of people all of whom are facing an uncertain future. Very descriptive with an astute attention to details. The ending left me hoping that a sequel will soon follow

It's even tough to tag this one, because we get another case of an author abusing the "zombie" concept. Bottom-line: this is mostly the tale of vile humans abusing others trying to survive an unexplained apocalypse.

Inexplicably set in 1991 (though published in 2008) this tale of four survivors (three at first, another is introduced half-way through) meanders in tone and detail as well as style. For no discernible reason two of the survivors get to tell their tale in the first-person, while the other two are covered in the third. The narrative jumps between the various survivors and roughly aligns the time period but other guessing there is no way to verify that since chunks of time are often thrown off in backstory recollections. The three characters introduced at the start are a 20-year-old slacker (whose personality gets some attention through the first-person narrative at the very beginning), a nebbishy 40-year-old vacationing computer programmer and a despicable terrorist. While some reviewers seem to find this last choice interesting or bold it is quite horrendous especially given that he is the other character granted a first-person view. Later a retired New York City cop enters the switching narrative. The choice of changing the perspective of the story rarely works and fails utterly here, and usually the book reads as three separate stories that on a whim the author decided to link together rather than a cogent narrative style.

About the "Zombies": I will once again grant that there is no one type of zombie, but the dead that are afraid of the daylight yet are drawn to fire? Other reviewers toss out 99% and 98% as the percent of the world's population that has died. While there is no word of any country other than the U.S., I'd peg it at more like 99.9999% of the population dead. In an instant. And they lie around dead for a while and then "disappear". The "zombies" are more of a concern than a threat here, they are the more standard slow and awkward time, and the fact that they retreat in the day time removes most of their "bite", not that biting ever takes place here.

A note about the Kindle version: it appears the author just dumped a text file. While there is occasional new paragraph indentation mostly everything just runs together, their are odd shifts in justification, duplicated lines, section headings blended into paragraphs and other formatting errors. It doesn't make the book any more difficult to read, but it looks awful.

Page after page of boring description of surroundings and inventory made me want to file this one away before finishing but I just couldn't. There are no real action scenes or tension as most of the confrontations with the "bad guys" just come out of nowhere and the protagonists are taken off guard. The usual military bunker and search for food tropes are here, and a few intriguing concepts keep this from being a one-star for me, but I didn't care about any of the characters and other than the ridiculous everyone-drops-dead-instantly premise Sunset brings nothing new to the table and once again I was burned in my quest for zombie fiction.

If you're just out of options in a quest to read anything tangentially tied to zombie fiction I will understand your suffering through this book. But I refuse to tag it "zombies": what zombie would be afraid of the daylight hours?

I bought this on my kindle and wish i had read more of the sample first. It's amateurish at best. It barely fits the genre as a zombie, post apocalyptic novel either. I read about 3/4 of the book, praying it would get better. I deleted the text with the last couple of chapters with absolutely no interest in how the main characters end up

I read alot of zombie fiction and found this very enjoyable. I'm looking forward to the sequel.

I wasn't expecting this to be a zombie novel. I'm not keen on those books, too much dead walking and eating the living...gross. I bought this book a few months ago so I didn't remember the reviews that told me it was a zombie novel. I'm glad I didn't remember them. I liked this book from the get go. I enjoyed all the characters and hated the right ones too. Unlike other reviewers, I never found this book boring. I actually found it to be a page turner.

When I first discovered the zombies, I thought, oh here we go, another nasty disgusting book about dead people eating constantly and vivid descriptions of it. I was glad this was not the case. I enjoyed that the book didn't dwell on the zombies and enjoyed the twists of the way the survivors turned into monsters. Unlike another reviewer, I also don't feel like this was unbelievable, when 99% of the world dies, people will go insane and let their darkest desires free. It felt very believable to me.

I suggest if you are looking for a good, fast page turner that won't make you sick reading it, read this book.

This book is, in one word, "GREAT". If you like zombie stories you will really like this one. You can really put yourself in the place of the main charaters and wonder, what would I do in their place. I can not wait for his second book in this series, which should be out by years end, to hit the market. Buy this one, if you are looking for a great summer read, that is, if you are into horror stories about zombies and the end of the world. Highly recommended!!!!

Save your money. I know this is fiction, but come on. The story takes place in 1991, and yet the author talks about the Department of Homeland Security and cloning? The grammar is horrid, the character description (not development, for the characters were never truly developed) is juvenile at best. And how believble is it that all but five or six people left in the world are sadistic rapists and toturers? This book reads like it was written by a fourteen year old. Again I say, save your money.

This was a good Zombie novel. It had a unique twist to the traditional Zombie stories. Ritonya needs to write part 2

I always looked something that had a story from multiple characters from differnt parts of the US, there trials and tribulations, we got just enough character development to feel a bond with them. I have almost everything there is to read out there and was quite excited to get this and i am glad to say i was not disappointed in the least, i hope to see more from this author.