Customer Reviews

Twilight of the Dead

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As a fan of all-things-zombie for over twenty years I had never experienced "zombie fiction" before, and eagerly scoured the Amazon reviews of probably the exact same books you have already looked at. After reading the glowing reviews of this book I discounted the amateurish cover art and immediately ordered it.

Upon arrival the first thing I noticed once I began perusing the first few pages was the size of the font. I'm sure I'm being nit-picky but it seemed to me that a larger size font was chosen to maximize the number of pages - slim still at just over 200 pages. This, coupled with the actual dimensions of the book and the heretofore cited simplistic cover art just gave me the feeling I was holding something aimed at a much younger audience. Don't get me wrong, I fully realize this is a book about the Zombie Apocalypse, but I guess I expected something a little more literary after seeing reviews calling it the "best book I ever read" and throwing out phrases like "metaphysical subjectivism." I have to wonder what other "books" these reviewers tend to read.

As for the story, I will admit it is enjoyable for what it offers. However, some things had me wondering "wait, didn't they just say.." and "that doesn't seem right, wouldn't they have..." a little too often. I felt like I was reading a second or third draft where the plot hadn't been cemented nor the holes filled in. And my god, please use a proofreader in future. I can forgive an overlooked comma but there were too many instances where something that should have been caught actually took me out of the story wondering if maybe I had read it wrong. The biggest offender being a cliffhanger-type situation closing out a chapter - "But he had been bitten!" instead was printed "But he had bitten!" which made no sense in the context of the scene and really ruined the tension of the moment.

Character-wise it was refreshing to have a female protagonist, but I was struck by the fact that seemingly every male in her life, excluding her father, either wanted to have sex with her or already had. Seemed a bit banal to me. I found myself rolling my eyes every time another newly introduced male character threw out a clichéd come-on or uttered a moronic innuendo. Enough.

Bottom line: it's a fairly enjoyable read if you can get past the overall unpolished feeling and glaring editorial oversights.

I just glanced down at the next part of this review form, where it says "I am over the age of 13." A very applicable phrase with which to end this .

Adkins book reads less like a horror story than it does a tale of a young woman maturing to acknowledge the world as it exists and learning to deal with it.
Horror factor is minimal. To be quite honest, except the last few chapters (which are somewhat silly and far-fetched, even for a zombie novel) the walking dead are in the background, treated as props and scenery for the story.

Definitely not recommended to anyone looking for a good zombie read.

It is five years after a Zombie Plague and most of humanity is wiped out. The dead are now the rulers of the world. Those still alive struggle to survive Courtney Colvin was still a teenage kid when the plague started, but somehow she survived in the nightmare world of the dead and found the fortified town of Eastpointe. She lives a quiet but lonely life. She isn't as content as the others in town. She wants to know if there are any other survivors. She soon gets her answer. A mysterious stranger arrives claiming to know the location of the antidote to the plague. To retrieve this cure, she and other survivors must leave the safety of Eastpointe and into a world of the flesh-eating dead.

I love a good Zombie Story so when I seen Twilight of the Dead I had to grab a copy. It ended up being a very wise decision. Twilight is one of the better Zombie stories I've read and I have read just about all of them. Travis follows the Romero style Zombie formula, but he adds his own twist that I thought was very clever and entertaining. It gives the Zombie Genre a real boost. You can tell from Travis's writing style that he is more than just a fanboy. He has real writing skills, and I think that he has a lot to offer to the Horror Genre.

Travis has written a story that was very character driven. A lot of times in Zombie stories the author focuses so much on the gore, carnage, and action that the character development suffers for it. Travis doesn't make that mistake. The gore, carnage, and action are there, but he takes the time to develop the characters. I didn't find one that was Wooden or Hollow.

Twilight takes off on the first page, and it never lets up. Travis created a world that completely consumed me, and that is a sign of really good storyteller. I didn't want Twilight to end. It also moves at a very fast pace. There wasn't a single spot in this story that bored me. It was a true pleasure to read. The only complaint I had was the way the it ended, but I found out Travis plans a sequel so that took care of that.

I recommend Twilight of the Dead to anyone who loves an original and character driven Zombie story. Travis is a very good writer and I cant wait to to see what he has in store for us in the future. Twilight of the Dead is one of the best stories the Zombie genre has to offer.

In a nutshell my review of Twilight of the Dead by Travis Adkins goes like this: Twilight of the Dead by Travis Adkins is yet another book in the Permuted Press family that adheres faithfully to what has to be the company's mandate: good ideas told badly.

Because that is what Mr. Adkins does. And he does it very, very well.

The basic premise of this book is not all that unique. The Dead rise and Society crumbles before their relentless onslaught. The main character must somehow survive the horrifying horror of the End of the World and then, along with a disparate group of survivors, learn to their even greater horror that the true monster isn't just the rotting ghouls scratching away outside their walls, but the living, breathing people they're trapped inside with.

See? Nothing unusual or groundbreaking there, but then, it doesn't have to be, right? That description is exactly what gets us all excited, it's the story we want, the one we've been looking for and the reason we are all willing to slog through all of the sub-par "literature" found within this genre. And that nugget is what Mr. Adkins starts out with. Then he takes it up a notch and throws in one of the most loved protagonists in the sci-fi/comic-book/horror set: The snarky rocker chick. After that he adds in some ruin looting, a walled haven and a team of specially trained zombie fighters and what does that mean to you and me?

It means we got ourselves a possible slice of fried awesome, that's what.

But then Mr. Adkins fumbles, he stumbles, he trips and then he falls. In a word: he fails. In two words: He fails miserably.

To begin with, the time line makes no sense. 5 years ago the town filled up with all the supplies they were ever going to need so they just stopped going out? 5 years ago? So... they've just been hanging out then? Doing what? Partying? The noise from their many BBQs and Badminton matches didn't ever bring an army of the Dead down upon their heads? 5 years now, this magical cornucopia mall they have within this gated community has just been pumping out a never ending cascade of food and supplies while the people dance and sing and laugh, tra-la-la-la and go back to normal lives? 6 months, okay, maybe they might hunker down for six months, but 5 years? The World ends, Society is destroyed and then a bunch of spoiled First-World-living-the-leisurely-high-tech-lifestyle Americans build and are able to reasonably maintain the first ever completely contained and self-sustaining community WITH a coin based economy? Based on what? Gold? Air? What about medicine or chemicals for mixing gunpowder or more planting seeds or a million and a half other things? Five years? ugh... forget it... moving on...

Secondly, Courtney, the intended snarky, independently awesome and capable rocker chick, is instead consistently portrayed as naïve, stupid and ridiculously stubborn. She's a complete cartoon, so much so, you wonder if Mr. Adkins has ever actually MET a girl like this before. Once again... for 5 years she's lived here, not having to work due to her service as a scavenger, 5 years she's been in this town and all she's done is watch movies and read books and sneer at anyone who tries to talk to her? For five years? Once again... maybe for a month or two, but after five years wouldn't she be forced to grow up or maybe mature a little bit, if not from simple aging then from the nature of the world itself? And if you're willing to buy that, the fact that she hasn't just makes her all the more unlikeable. Also, wouldn't the townspeople grow concerned over this highly trained killer hermit with a bad attitude holed up all by herself at the far end of their town?

And the Gossip Girl/One Tree Hill type high school drama is so pervasive, so false and so completely without any emotional motivation to back it up, that it just becomes tedious and way, way too quickly at that, especially when you consider just how short a novel this is. None of the human interaction rings true, with the possible exception of Courtney leaving her Father in the very beginning, but other than that...

I mean, I understand what he's trying to do, because, as we all know, the real meat of a zombie story is the survivors and the emotional yoke they toil under, but you have to be able to make your characters and their inner turmoils real or the story just sinks hard and fast and unfortunately, Mr. Adkins can not make them real.

And then there's the oh-so-transparent Jock hate, (nerd...) but wait... apparently the Jock is actually one of the rare, kind of alright rich kid jocks (Just like She's All That... but reversed! With zombies!) And the Black Berets themselves? Their outfits are ludicrous. They're laughable. Coupled with the ninja swords, they just reminded me of my friend's home made "Surf Ninja" Halloween costume. It was silly, people, silly. Lets not even get into the uncomfortable, overt naïveté that rides shotgun with the mishandled and uneven sex scenes that go on between Courtney and her mentor, Sgt. Soontobedead.

Oh yeah, the zombies... forgot about those... How is that possible you ask? Oh, well, that's because they're kind of not really ever mentioned or that much of a threat to begin with, except of course when clichéd Mad-scientist-killer-type-guy inexplicably sends an army of them to attack the town. That's no big deal right? Eastpointe has high walls, right? Oh yeah? Well these zombies have on metal helmets (they're indestructible!) and knives tied to their hands (they're Wolverine!). Will Courtney and Leon (the Jock) stop the evil Lex Luthor's army of radio controlled zombies in time? Will the cure (cure for what? Being eaten?) miraculously save one of the main characters if they get bitten during the story's climax or is that too telegraphed and clichéd? And if so, why not just go all out and embrace the clichés and stage an end fight scene at that infamous Hollywood-action-movie-staple: the fire and steam factory?

I apologize, at this point I'm being too rough on Mr. Adkins, he does deserve kudos for even finishing a novel in the first place and then putting it out there to be snarked at by jerks like me. To be fair, I actually enjoyed the beginning of the story, especially the attack on the convoy and many other sporadic moments through out, which really only highlights the true problem with this book for me. Mr. Adkins has ability within him, he has ideas. He's not awful, he's not without hope. And while they may not be well executed, his stories are well grounded, thought out and, in the end, fun. He's got potential. Honestly, its not his story that fails here, its his details. So, yet again, the Permuted Press editorial staff, such as it is, has completely failed their authors and done them a huge disservice with their ridiculously poorly performed job. Right now Mr. Adkins is just another example of the only thing small internet presses have proven to me so far: Sometimes people don't get published for a reason.

Mr. Adkins' reason is because he is not yet ready. This story needs a lot of work, attention, critique and second and third drafts, TRUE second and third drafts.

My recommendation: Not yet. Almost, but not yet. Our quest for a great zombie book continues, dear readers, so slog on, because there's nothing to see here.

I really wanted to like this short novel, especially after reading many of the reviews here. I plowed through it pretty quickly, but my enthusiasm flamed out early on. I don't want to trash Adkins here; on the contrary, I give him props -- hey, he wrote a novel, right? -- and I will keep an eye out for his future work.

HOWEVER--

While competently written and character-focused, there was a level of naiveté emanating from the text. Sure, this springs from the protagonist, but the writing lent itself more toward something you'd expect to find in the Young Adult section (also exemplified by the comic-bookie Lara Croft-type cover art of the special edition). The protagonist was a whiny, juvenile brat. I appreciate Adkins's willingness to take a risk and cast a young 20's female lead, but I simply did not care about her -- ditto the rest of the characters, except maybe her bartender friend, who exits as quickly as she arrives. I expected to dislike Leon more, but his character struck me as more believable and less irritating than Courtney. (Let's hate on the jock-types, folks. After all, we're the nerds writing and reading zombie fiction, right?)

For a zombie novel, there really weren't a heckuva lot of zombie appearances either, opening up more space for Courtney's moodiness and Beverly Hills 90210-ish drama.

Villain's character was flat as a pancake and predictable. Definitely expected more there.

But enough of the negativity. There were a few bright spots. Although a whole lot of nothing happens in the book's middle section, I did feel the story as a whole was well-paced. The between-the-chapters notes were a fantastic addition as well, outlaying military documents, maps, and manual excerpts of the Black Beret creation. Filler? Yes, but fun and added to the story. Eastpointe was well described, as was Courtney's journey from Florida to Rhode Island, but when the Black Berets set out in search of the cure, the setting became a bit vague.

While Adkins needs to mature more as a writer, he has the fundamentals down. With widely varying levels of quality in zombie literature out there, this falls somewhere in the middle. If you're reading this review, you probably enjoy zombie fiction. As do I. Despite my two-and-a-half star rating, I do recommend.

The problem with Twilight is that it gets caught up in the banality and drama of life instead of watching the world fall apart, desperate struggles to survive, or intense moments of fighting / escaping zombies (the things people usually want to see in zombie fiction).

The book's pacing is very uneven also. The first portion plods along very slowly and seems largely to exist only for the purpose of telling how the main character got from the end of the world to the walled community. The latter portion occurs so quickly that it seems the author realized he needed to slap an ending onto the first entry in what he was already planning to be an entire series of novels.

The climax of the main story is not particularly compelling. Like much of the rest of the book, the author shies away from describing any significant amount of combat.

After the main story's conclusion, the author spends several pages on backup stories. Frankly, while these short stories are a bit more interesting, I couldn't help but feel these pages should have been spent to flesh out the latter portions and maybe given the main storyline that bit more oomph it needed.

On a side note, while characters make snide remarks about various groups of people throughout the book, the author only makes a gross caricature out of a religious leader. Think of the most offensive portrayal you've ever seen of a religious person on TV or in a movie, and that's the person they have in here. Being a religious person myself, this bothered me a bit, despite the shortness of the debate he was involved in. I don't think it would have bothered me as much if he hadn't been the only such exaggeration.

Ultimately, while there are some entertaining bits here and there, there are much better zombie books you could spend your money on.

I don't regret at all buying this book. Enjoyable zombie read. My only complaints are that the ending seemed a little scant on detail and the overall story was kind of like "Dawn of the Dead" meets "My So-Called Life". But, all in all, it was good.

From start to finish this book keeps you on the edge of your seat. The characters are believable, and the story is action packed and interesting. Once you pick it up you won't want to put it down.

I can't wait for the sequel!

I didn't realize until after I purchased Twilight of the Dead that it was self-published novel. 99% of these books are painfully awful and so I reluctantly began to read. The dialogue in the first few chapters was bit cheesy, but I found the quicker pace and initial setup a lot of fun. Rather than heap scenes of gore upon violence the way you might think an author would do in a zombie book, Travis Adkins focuses on the characters of the living and how they deal with their newly inherited undead world.

Although there were a few twists and turns that caught me off guard, most of the story fell into place exactly how I expected it to. I didn't care for the ridiculously armored zombies and the remote control plot was a little far fetched for my tastes. However, one gimmick that Adkins infuses throughout the book is very cool zombie reports by various experts and non-experts before every chapter. Radio transcripts, pages from training manuals designed to defend against zombies, laboratory reports on reanimation facts, and various maps enhance the overall reading experience.

A lot of professionally published authors frown upon self published material - and rightfully so -- but I must say, that the copy editing in this book (I only discovered two errors) was a lot better than many of the mass market paperbacks from established New York publishing houses where I would find over a dozen errors in a single book. I just thought I'd mention that.

Clocking in at only 199 pages of story (I'm not counting the afterwards by the author), this is closer to a novella than a full novel, so the book price might be a little high for some. But I'm glad I picked it up and have included it in my horror collection. Twilight of the Dead by no means will change the face of zombies as we know it, but it was a refreshing little story that was fast and fun.

Travis Adkins has developed a pretty solid, if fairly short, zombie story. The main character, Courtney, grows and develops with the story; this is something that seems difficult to do for some other writers in the genre to do. She is strong and tough, which is to be expected given that she accepted the training to become a black beret-a zombie killer, but she wasn't always that way and she still is human and vulnerable. She is not superhuman by any means, which means that she is extremely appealing. The combat techniques described in the book are plausible and there is some depth of detail you simply do not get in most other works as to what you would have to do, how you would have to adjust when combating an enemy that feels no pain and essentially only has one real kill spot.
Certainly, the cast of characters here are fairly young, which drives the story in certain ways; their personal problems are something I can remember but perhaps cannot fully relate to at nearly 40, but I still appreciated it. I think Mr. Adkins does a good job of describing the moodiness of some teens/young adults and and I saw it all as realistic given the circumstances they face. Growing up in a dead world would be a unique situation, especially for a people of this age vs. someone older, fully matured, and entangled with family and responsibilities beyond your own self development.
While I was not totally appreciative of metal sheathed zombies or a madman who somehow thinks of zombies as the next stage of evolution (a preposterous concept to me, but one that an insane mind might wrap itself around, I suppose), I did appreciate the challenges the main character faces and has to overcome with these enemies. It made for an entertaining story that was a fun read.
I also enjoyed the other tidbits after the main story was complete-the return to the past with other characters besides Courtney as well as what essentially amounts to a flashback with the main character and the black beret crew of Eastpointe on a past mission. It further fleshed out the story and given that there will be a sequel gave even more insight into both the main character and her "boyfriend", Leon.
This is a well written book that was a fun read. The ghastly editing and plot hole errors of some other books of this genre that are self published or slapped together haphazardly are not present here-the story was well thought out, the characters three dimensional, and the scenario fairly plausible. The editing is solid and the storyline is tight. Again, I am not sure I would say I loved the bad guy and his creations, but they were creative and different. This story focused on our main character and not necessarily the baddies as key players, so my issues with that aspect of the story were not strong.
If I were to gripe it would be that I would have liked even more character development-more details on Courtney's experiences with Gordon Levi and perhaps even more back story on Leon. Not that the story is short on understanding of the characters, I just think this book could have delved even further. But if this is a gripe, it is a minor one and I am not complaining to emphatically about it.
A enjoyable story that was worth the read and I look forward to the sequel when it is published. Travis Adkins has a good voice and one that I definitely enjoyed here.