Author: Claire C Riley Title: Odium
Published On: 2013-10-04
Series: The Dead Saga #1
Pages: 376
Genres: Dystopian, Fiction
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SYNOPSIS
It’s better to die by the gun than die by the dead.
Nina’s life was irrevocably changed when humanity’s dead began to rise.
Now, she lives behind the walls.The barricaded cities, erected by the government to protect the remnants of civilization, have become a brutal dictatorship- causing the inhabitants within to starve, steal and claw for survival. Life behind the walls has become as terrifying as roaming the zombie-ridden landscape beyond.
Citizens trade what they can to gain food, water, and shelter. Nina has only one currency—her body and she is tired of submitting herself to the greedy hands of the self-proclaimed leaders.An opportunity to escape presents itself in the fate of a young girl named Emily-Rose. For the price of a stale piece of bread, she is set for banishment from the city, and most likely a horrific death at the hands of the deaders. Nina tells herself that it is sympathy and not self-preservation that makes her follow the young girl out of the walled metropolis, and into the overgrown world beyond.
Unused to fighting the deaders, Nina tries to scrounge for her survival and against her better judgment, begins to care for Emily-Rose. However, when you have a bread-stealing liability providing your only back up, survival seems even tougher. Nina is forced to fight for their lives, and with every zombie slain, she becomes fiercer, faster – a grim reaper with her not-so-sharp butcher’s knife.
Along the path to a safe-haven that might not exist, Nina and Emily-Rose meet Mikey who introduces them to a new life they could not imagine, a life above the ground. However, this new world brings new dangers, and darker shadows than she knew.
Nina finds out that the deaders aren’t the only thing to fear beyond the wall.
And that fear will not be ignored, or Forgotten.
Also by this author: Thicker Than Blood
[usr 5]
Odium is my very first Claire Riley book and will not be my last! She obviously has no problems killing off characters, burning bridges, and symbolically letting the empire win the ground war for Endor! (It’ll make sense after you read the book.)This story was hilarious and horrifyingly descriptive, engaging as many senses as possible without employing a scratch-and-sniff cover and a free bucket of congealed ooze. Zombies are disgusting, messy, gross, and on their better days they tend to offend the olfactory organs in ways no one should ever know about. But you will, with every ooze, squish, and splash of gore!
There are more f-bombs than an invading army would use, a sarcastic and guarded main character that drags us along through a broken world infested by deaders(zombies, walkers, etc etc). The story has great pacing that gives you just enough time to catch your breath before something stinky hits the fan. There was a spot near the end where I saw the twist coming a mile away and I thought we were going to hit one of my pet peeve clichés but at the last second it veered away! *whew* There are a few things that have me still pondering over the book, but I’m hopeful between the prequel novella and the sequel due to release any day now (or already depending on when you read this) I will get answers!
So all in all, this is a great, sarcastic & gory zombie romp of a read that if you’re even a remote fan of the genre, I think you’ll enjoy!
