The Morningstar Strain by Z. A. Recht!
A few months back I discovered Plague of the Dead: The Morningstar Strain by Z. A. Recht. I downloaded both of his books Plague of the Dead and Thunder and Ashes. Now let me preface that I love apocalyptic type books. It doesn’t have to be zombies. It could a storm, a virus, a plague of Vampires, doesn’t matter. I’ve just always been fascinated with what happens when society breaks down. What will people do? How do they react to what’s happened and what now needs to be done.
Now when I started Plague of the Dead I wasn’t sure how much I had liked it. I had just finished another end of the world trilogy called The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan. It was enjoyable, it was good even. But, it lacked a few things in my opinion. I will review this book later, but I wanted to just say that the series could have been better. Then I go right into another end of the world story. Plague of the Dead: The Morningstar Strain. The book was a pleasure. It wasn’t the greatest zombie story every told. But, it really held my interest. I related to most of the characters and most importantly, the main characters didn’t do anything stupid!
After The Strain, I was a little gun shy because there was a major moment of stupid going on at the end of one of the books and though I could kind of understood the characters reasons, it was just such a stupid move it almost ruined the rest of the books in the series for me. Fortunately, Plague of the Dead was next and it was pretty damn good.
Plague of the Dead is part zombie book, part viral outbreak and part road trip. There’s a lot of characters but basically two main characters. One is a female doctor working for the CDC as I recall. The other is older guy, a general in the Army stationed in Africa. An outbreak of the Morningstar Virus soon occurres in Africa.
Before long the General and his men are fleeing Africa as it’s zombies are taking over. He has some limited contact with the younger woman from the CDC. They have been corresponding via email about the virus. She is on the east coast and having her own issues with the government and teams up with a few people. They have decided to attempt to make their way to Omaha Nebraska. Hoping that the secret CDC office is still functional.
Meanwhile the General and his men have arrived on the west coast near Seattle. The government can not
be really reached. The general takes his men and they too head for the CDC office in Nebraska. The rest of the first book and second are all about the road trip. The journey to Nebraska is filed with trials and tribulations for both groups.
After finishing the second book I look desperately for part 3. Can’t find it. Doesn’t exist! I look for other books by the author and I very sadly discover that Z. A. Recht had passed away in 2009 a year after Thunder and Ashes was released. He was only 26 years old.
Fortunately for us, he was working on book three and with the help Thom Brannan the book was finally completed! I have not read it yet. It just came out this past week. I really look forward to getting back to this series. The first two books were pretty good. I found them to be completely entertaining. I recommend them to anyone who is a zombie fan or a fan of apocalyptic books.
