Brian Kingston, a captain with good intentions but a heavy drinking problem, jumps at the opportunity to make more money than he can imagine on a deep-sea dive aboard the search and rescue submarine, The Betty Loo. He quickly discovers just what he’s gotten himself, and his crew, into. The Betty Loo will be going to suicidal depths on a mission to rescue The Peacemaker, a sub once thought to be unsinkable. After receiving an anonymous threat on the day of departure, Brian is left with no choice but to continue on the mission.
But the depths of the sea aren’t the only problems ahead. New crewmembers arrive, and seeds of distrust are sown within hours. And, upon arrival to The Peacemaker, he realizes that though not all the bodies are dead, there is no one to rescue. The crew members, both old and new, have to trust one another and fight for their lives against the adapting undead or join them in the floating graveyard that is The Peacemaker.
Z-Boat by Suzanne Robb is more mystery-thriller than a horror novel. While the first 1/4 is a painfully slow set-up of the characters and setting, it's obviously necessary. I know a lot of readers that would be tempted to give up, and, if they did, they would miss the fantastic writing in the rest of the book. Robb has a real flair for the dramatic, and knows how to reach in & twist your guts.
The prologue is a nice touch, but depressing as hell. The new world powers are Russia, Israel, and North Korea. Drinking water has to be mined from the Moon. On a mission to find a new sources of energy in the ocean, the crew of a submarine are being slaughtered by some unknown enemy, and send out an SOS. The chain of events in the prologue really sucked me into the book, but the pace of the story came to a crawl as the timeline jumped ahead six months to a rescue mission.
Robb does a thorough run-down of the characters' descriptions, including some brief personal background info, and switches the POV among them for the duration of the story...but it takes time to get everyone into place for the unfolding drama. It's like the characters of Deep Rising, in the setting of The Hunt for Red October, with some elements of Resident Evil, and some fabulous original writing by Robb.
As always,
AstraDaemon
But the depths of the sea aren’t the only problems ahead. New crewmembers arrive, and seeds of distrust are sown within hours. And, upon arrival to The Peacemaker, he realizes that though not all the bodies are dead, there is no one to rescue. The crew members, both old and new, have to trust one another and fight for their lives against the adapting undead or join them in the floating graveyard that is The Peacemaker.
Z-Boat by Suzanne Robb is more mystery-thriller than a horror novel. While the first 1/4 is a painfully slow set-up of the characters and setting, it's obviously necessary. I know a lot of readers that would be tempted to give up, and, if they did, they would miss the fantastic writing in the rest of the book. Robb has a real flair for the dramatic, and knows how to reach in & twist your guts.
The prologue is a nice touch, but depressing as hell. The new world powers are Russia, Israel, and North Korea. Drinking water has to be mined from the Moon. On a mission to find a new sources of energy in the ocean, the crew of a submarine are being slaughtered by some unknown enemy, and send out an SOS. The chain of events in the prologue really sucked me into the book, but the pace of the story came to a crawl as the timeline jumped ahead six months to a rescue mission.
Robb does a thorough run-down of the characters' descriptions, including some brief personal background info, and switches the POV among them for the duration of the story...but it takes time to get everyone into place for the unfolding drama. It's like the characters of Deep Rising, in the setting of The Hunt for Red October, with some elements of Resident Evil, and some fabulous original writing by Robb.
As always,
AstraDaemon
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