Frightful Friday is a weekly meme in which I feature a particularly scary or chilling book that I’ve read that week. Feel free to grab the button & join in!
This week’s featured book is Autumn by David Moody:
- Paperback:320 pages
- Publisher:St. Martin’s Griffin (October 26, 2010)
- ISBN-10: 031256998X
- Source: Personal copy
One seemingly normal autumn afternoon, a vicious virus spreads, killing thousands of people. More than 99% of the population is dead within 24 hours, their bodies littering the streets. A few survivors find one another: Emma, a medical student, Michael, a manager at a computer company, and Carl, a maintenance worker. They seek refuge in a shoddy community center with several other survivors.
After a few days without any signs of rescue, Emma, Michael & Carl decide to leave their temporary hideout in attempts of finding food and a better place to make camp. However, change is in the air; some of the dead lay lying on the streets begin to rise. At first, the walking dead seem harmless, just walking around aimlessly, not noticing the survivors. Soon, however, they are drawn to the survivors by the noise they make. Initially harmless, they have now become quite deadly. There are thousands upon thousands of them, drawn to the living…
Autumn isn’t your typical zombie novel, not by far. While the walking dead are certainly a key feature of the story, the reactions of the survivors is by far a more prevalent one. Moody gives the reader a study in the human condition; how individuals react and attempt to survive when dealt with a horrible tragedy. The pacing may be too slow for those looking for an action packed gore-fest, but this is due to the time Moody takes to build and develop his characters. At the end, you can’t help but hope for the best for the survivors. The pacing does speed up near the end, the reader desperate to know what happens next. This, by far, is one of my favorite zombie series. Highly recommended!
Autumn, as a novel, has quite the interesting history/back story. It was originally released as a self-published, free ebook download. Half a million downloads later, the now five book series was picked up for print publication. Additionally, the movie is available in several countries; I plan to check it out as soon as I can.
As mentioned above, Autumn is the first of a five part series:
- AUTUMN (available now)
- AUTUMN: THE CITY (available now)
- AUTUMN: PURIFICATION (available now)
- AUTUMN: DISINTEGRATION (available November 2011)
- AUTUMN: AFTERMATH
For more information on this series, and Moody’s other books, check out his Web site.
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