Hello everyone,
I've been on a bender recently, re-consuming my favourite zombie fiction, and I want to find new stuff. Unlike many people, I'm not yet sick of classic zombie outbreak stories which follow survivors navigating the outbreak, so I'm looking for something relatively classic/basic.
I'm hoping some of you kind folks could point me in the right direction. My wishlist is as follows:
Classic Zombie Outbreak:
- story set during an outbreak of a zombie apocalypse or in a world where zombies pose a significant threat
- timeskips are fine, as long as dealing with the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse is still the main focus
- survivors are focused primarily on zombies and other human factions as threats, and are still very much struggling to survive
- I'm not interested in: romance with/between zombies, zombies being POV characters, 'good'/misunderstood zombies
Good Characters
-
the characters are well written and realistic
- not interested in primarily YA, although I will read YA that's highly regarded
-
acting in ways that make sense given the world and situations
-
characters who suffer consequences for their mistakes and stupidity
-
anyone can die (GRRM style)
Hard Worldbuilding
-
zombie outbreak has clear rules that are never broken for the sake of a plot
- my pet peeve here is when a stable survivor faction that successfully operates for a while falls to zombies for a dumb reason just because the writer couldn't think of a better way to raise the stakes
- zombies should be consistent in their level of threat and not be a harmless nuisance one page and then ridiculously overpowered next
-
human factions have realistic politics and organisation
- no unhinged psychos who execute their own men for fun, leading highly successful factions; who would follow such a leader over a sane person? Insane people aren't good leaders.
- well depicted factions structured around existing politics (such as a communist faction vs fascist faction, or anarchist faction that actually behaves like anarchists do) will be highly regarded
-
realistic depiction of technology and science
- as detailed descriptions of the survival challenges and their solutions as possible
- no magical science/techno wizards who can cook antibiotics in a bathtub
- realistic depiction of decay of technology, such as fuel being scarce because it'd go bad sitting in tanks of abandoned cars in a few months
-
military that's not completely and utterly incompetent
-
special zombies (bloaters, acid spitters, tank zombies) are a plus
Not interested in
- gratuitous violence that does nothing to serve the plot or character building
- supernatural zombies or magic
The works that I have read/consumed so far that IMO mostly meet this brief are:
-
The Last of Us (game and TV show both)
-
We're Alive (audio drama)
- but issues with worlbuilding
-
Kingdom (Korean TV show)
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Left 4 Dead 1/2 (campaign story)
-
Day Z
Things I've read/consumed and that IMO don't meet the brief:
-
World War Z
- loved some of the individual stories, but oral history framing take the wind out of its sails for me
-
The Girl with All the Gifts
- not done reading this yet, and I like it, but I'm not sold on the main POV
I hope this is not too much of a TLDR. Thank you to anyone who responds and drops a suggestion.
by JimmyRecard
1 Comment
I feel like I was made for answering this!
You need to check out Christopher Artinian’s Safe Haven series, along with its sister series The End of Everything. It sounds like it is right up your street. (I’d start with the Safe Haven series).
I don’t want to offer too much, but it seems to tick pretty much all your boxes, especially if you read the whole series (not every book will have special zombies, the military etc, but they are in the series). With regard to the “anyone can die” request, I have just had to put one of the books down for a while because he killed off a favourite main character. Though the author is a dog lover and he is very clear that he will never kill off a dog which I appreciate!
The world building in his books is brilliant, and he has also done shorter books with some of the main characters back stories in, so you can get a better feeling for them before and leading up to the initial outbreak.
Another good one, especially if you’re after a short stand alone is Zombies: A record of the year of infection by Don Roff. I really enjoyed that one, particularly the audiobook, the ending is just spot on.
I’m not sure if you’re interested in The Walking Dead, but I quite enjoyed the book series (not the comics) about the Governor, they are worth a read. Though there are a couple of horrendous chapters in it, like really quite graphic and difficult to read (but still good!). It’s not canon to the show though, just a heads up 🙂
If you have any suggestions of your own I’d love to hear them. I’m always looking for new zompocs, wwz was alright, but I couldn’t get into the girl with all the gifts, it was a DNF for me :/