Blood Skies by Steven Montano

In Blood Skies the world as we know it has been smashed together with other worlds by an apocalyptic event known only as "The Black".  Cities that never were have appeared over night and cities that once were have been laid waste as the world shifted - and the things from our nightmares have returned.

That means vampires, zombies, and other horrors that like to eat or enslave people.  The only positive?  Magic has also returned.  It just comes with a price most of the time.

Mad Max with Magic and Real Vampires.  Hell Yeah!

The story is set 22 years after The Black as an organised faction of humanity, the Southern Claw Alliance, is locked in a stalemate in their war with the vampires of the Ebon Cities.  The vampires can't win any gains due to the bravery and growing powers of the human witches and warlocks, however, a powerful member of the Southern Claw, the witch Red, has stolen information which would give the vampires all of this knowledge and the power to destroy the Southern Claw as a result.

Enter the main character; Eric Cross.  Eric is a warlock in the service of the Southern Claw.  That means that he has a sort of guardian spirit that he can use to lash out in combat or shield himself from harm as well as perform other magics.  Of course there is a price to pay and using the spirit basically means he is guaranteed a short lifespan but when the only other option is being a vampires meal it seems reasonable...

Cross and his unit are tasked with finding and stopping Red at all costs before she can doom them all.

This book made me stop putting a rough genre guide at the top of my posts.  It was too hard to classify it neatly.  Its not a pure fantasy book because the setting has so many science fiction elements to it and overlaying the lot is a strong horror theme.  

Blood Skies has such a strong horror theme because of the atmosphere the book maintains throughout, something that the writer does really well through use of a dark visual imagery system.    As an example the very first paragraph of the book: 

He sees the city. It stands beyond fields of broken sand and salt estuaries, at the edge of a frozen sea, opposite a forlorn tower of black metal and razor protrusions. It is a city of the living.

It looks unnatural, like it doesn't belong.

Nothing in the world of Blood Skies is clean, it is always cold, broken, diseased. References to the world before The Black, by contract, are clean and bright but vague and soon to be forgotten memories.  Where ice, ash and darkness aren't the prevailing colors its sickly blood red or necrotic black.  This constant use of dark imagery really draws you in and reinforces the fact that the world in which Cross lives is a shattered and dying one.

The writer also takes his time revealing the rules and background of his setting to you.  This is something that I would normally be annoyed by, however, it fit in this setting as it helped to enhance the sense of dislocation that The Black seemed to be all about.  A risky strategy to use as it could have lost me but it was well enough done that it actually piqued my interest rather than leaving me confused.

Imagery and atmosphere are definitely the major strengths of the book.  

The adventure itself is exciting and sees Cross and his companions traverse a significant amount of the Blood Skies world including an undead city and a human town that has surrendered to the Ebon Cities.  There is plenty of action and those scenes are well written but the book is definitely not just about the combat. I say this despite the fact that the author refers to the book (series) as a "dystopian military dark epic fantasy. with real vampires." on his blog.

So where does it fail? 

Cross is an interesting character and develops as the book goes on, however, a lot of the other characters in the book aren't as well developed and don't grow much.  To be fair, this is often because life expectancy in the  Blood Skies world appears to be quite brief.

There are a number of spelling and grammatical errors.  Yes.  Pot.  Kettle.  Black.  I realize.  My work is just a blog not a book though and improving all the time (yeah that's what I tell myself...).  The errors in the end weren't enough to put me off or disrupt the flow of reading but if removed would leave the work feeling polished.

Also there is one scene in the book that left me going WTF.  The characters until then had made smart choices that tied in with their mission but at that one point they just sort of went off the reservation. It may have been in character but given the importance of what they were trying to achieve (stopping Red and saving mankind) it was bizarre.  I cant say more than that without spoilers but if you read the book you will get me.  

Despite those failings I have to be honest and say I loved Blood Skies (I made myself sit down and think of some negatives - I haven't pushed myself to do that until now).  It drew me in and I finished it in a matter of days.  

I loved it so much in fact that having read Blood Skies I knocked over Black Scars, the second book in the series, last night and will probably start Soulrazor (book 3) tonight.  The spelling errors persist (at one point yield is used instead of wield) but Cross keeps growing as a character and new ones come on board.

Oh, and the vampires in Blood Skies don't sparkle (possibly why the author refers to them as Real Vampires.  They are truly monstrous in this series - becoming one means losing yourself not just getting super powers in exchange for wanting to drink blood and they definitely aren't pretty.  

Steven Montano has his own blog here.

A Super Zombie Ebook: Ex Heroes, by Peter Clines

Yeah, yeah.  Its a cheesy blog title.

Its also appropriate - Ex Heroes is a tale of superheroes and the zombie apocalypse after all.

Zombies V Superheroes. Yeah.

A fairly random purchase one afternoon based on a "customers who bought this also bought" recommendation from Amazon (I cannot for the life of me remember the other horror ebook I was looking at), I was initially put off by the premise of the book.  

It sounded original, something the zombie genre desperately needs, but I was worried it was going to be shallow and hammed up.

I was happily surprised.

Ex Heroes is set in the aftermath of a major zombie outbreak which sees the US Government collapse as zombies overrun the populace.  These are the slow old school zombies but as you would expect no one believes zombies are real until its too late. 

The only place of safety?  A walled off movie studio in Hollywood under the protection of a band of superheroes - St George, Stealth, Gorgon, Zzzap, Cerberus, Regenerator.

The superheroes have a range of different powers and fit different superhero archetypes: 

Stealth is a genius with the body of a model who is the leader of the group.  She is fast and agile but her super power does appear to be her ability to think through situations and plan really fast, as well as being well equipped.  Sort of like Batman.   Her drawback?  She is emotionally removed from everybody around her and is always covered head to toe so that no one can see her.  

St George was called The Mighty Dragon before the zombie apocalypse and, like a dragon, can fly short distances, breath fire, is really strong and has a tough skin that is almost impossible to cut or penetrate.  St George is also the most moral of the heroes and reminded me of a limited Superman.  

Gorgon is a strange hero with an ability kind of like the one Cyclops from X-Men has, only instead of shooting energy out he sucks it from anyone who makes eye contact with him. When he drains people he gets super strength for a short time.  The only problem?  It doesn't work on zombies.  

Zzzap is a cripple when normal, but can shift into a form of pure energy at will and when he does so can fly, and of course burn zombies.  Zzzap is also the major power source for the fortified area in which the survivors are holed up.  A useful man to know all round.

Cerberus is like Iron Man, only without an infinite power source and much less agile - a couple of weaknesses I really liked.  A prototype robotic suit designed for the military the Cerberus suit was deployed by its inventor who is a young scientist.  She isnt anything like Tony Stark and is instead weirdly addicted to being in the suit - you get a real sense that she likes the power it gives, and hates being vulnerable out of it.

Regenerator is the man that cannot be killed, the man who can heal from any injury.  A doctor who developed super powers and can heal almost anything except the sickness in his arm from a zombie bite that is consuming all of his power just to keep him alive...  As the story progresses you find out that Regenerator lost his wife early in the zombie apocalypse  and learn about his frustration as the infection his power is fighting basically makes him just a normal man, no longer a superhero.  

These are not the only superheroes in the book - there are a couple of others who crop up - but they are the main characters.

One of the major features of the book is that you learn a lot about these superheroes and they develop in character as the story progresses.  I always like character driven tales and this book delivers on that as each of the heroes develops over time - some become darker, some more driven, but they all become more real as you read on.

In addition to the normal story driven character development the writer also uses a series of flashbacks to help provide background and rationale to the superheroes.   Going from a "now" chapter to a "then" chapter which covers a major event in the superheroes past can be a bit offputting at times - it breaks up the story flow after all - but once you get used to it this actually adds a lot of depth to their character and some of their tales are actually quite moving and others show a very dark past.

No superhero book would be complete though without a villain and in the case of Ex Heroes the villains are a street gang that has also managed to survive the zombie apocalypse and is a constant threat not only to the compound in which the superheroes and their charges live but also outside of it when they are scavenging for supplies.  

They have a particular enmity for Gorgon who was, and is, one of the least like-able of the superheroes and definitely the quickest to resort to violence.

The majority of the story covers escalation in tensions between the superheroes and the street gang, both of whom offer a viable method for survival for the remaining survivors, but the street gang does it through using people as serfs whereas the superheroes are trying to help people survive to return to a normal way of living.

Now I mentioned other superheroes and that is one of the coolest parts of this book.  See, some superheroes are immune to the whole zombie bite thing because they are too tough, but not all of them, and a number of superheroes have already fallen and - you guessed it - become zombies.  

Scary thought isnt it.

  

Superheroes can become zombies - sucks doesn't it.
Marvel did a run of an alternative zombie apocalypse world
so Peter Clines wasnt entirely original, but he has done it well. 

There are also, as it turns out, other superheroes out there.  Or perhaps super villains?  That is as close as I get to spoilers though so my lips are zipped.

Overall its a good read and a book that I have kept on my Kindle rather than just leaving it in the archive once I finished reading it; a book that I can read again in a couple of months.

The writing is good, the characters engaging, and its flaws are fairly minor - mostly because the villains aren't as well developed in terms of character as the superheroes which is a shame.  It does also fall into the trap of  if superheroes exist, then all problems must be caused by them / super villains.  Normal people are just as capable of changing the world (for good or ill) and this is something overlooked by most superhero tales.

If you have read it, what do you think?  If not I would recommend it to you as a fairly original zombie apocalypse book that is worth your time to read.