A Plague Upon Your Family

Great second book! I purchased this book after reading the first one for free. I could not put the second book down. The story is great, but the inner dialog of Mike and his story telling is insanely wonderful. His recollection of his McDonald’s Samir/Becky/Don trio… well, you just have to read it, but we’ve all been there at some point! It had me laughing so hard, my son had to come check on me just to make sure I was ok. After the tears of laughter subsided, I re-read that recollection/story to my son aloud, my son was then laughing so hard that it took us about 15 minutes to move on from the laughing outbursts! Yes, trust me, it is that good!
I’ve read a lot of books, around 5 thousand, and many have a series where the first book is good enough you buy the next book, but then the story fizzles out… Not so with this book. I read this second book straight through in about three hours. (The first book took about a day and half… damn those chores and life getting in the way!) My son is now reading book one for himself and I recommended it to my father.
This series takes a plausible scenario of a CDC rushed ooops vaccine for H1N1 virus outbreak and creates a zombie apocalypse. However, rather than non-stop doom & gloom, we get these ‘Mike-isms’ and we get to hear his inner dialogue, along with those moments where his brain-thought-to-mouth filter fails him. It takes the now normal zombie apocalypse and adds a hysterically funny twist. But you also get to experience a bit more reality this way because we’ve all had these thoughts, well, maybe not all of them, and in reality, probably a rather small portion of them! Maybe!? Anyway, you see how family/friend/community dynamics play a major role in a survival (or any crisis event). We get to ask ourselves how far would you go to protect your loved ones, or just humanity in general.
Through books you get to enter another world/reality or realm. This series makes you question your morality, your trust in others, and even realistic issues such as the depravity of others, loss, and death of a loved one. You begin to understand the value of things we take for granted every day… clean drinking water, food, gas, showers. (I will never under value pain medicine, proper medical care, or showers again! I’m a mediocre germaphobe due to having auto-immune disease and multiple medical issues… blood soaked, zombie splatter clothing or bits in my hair, just might send me off the deep end, and that’s knowing I enjoy deer/elk hunting!)
I would recommend this book to anyone who likes adventure, survivalist, zombie, apocalyptic, comedy, etc., type book genres. I don’t regret buying the second book and have now started reading the third in this series and it’s still going strong.
Plus, this author is such a gem. He truly appreciates his readers taking the few moments out of their day to write a review. I think authors who put their work out there for the public to read, such as his first book in this series, deserves a few moments for us to write a review. For those who have B!+hed about poor editing, so do the authors! Many have expressed their disappointment with editors doing less than stellar editing. However, I didn’t find many problems with book one, two or what I’ve read of book three. In addition, this story is represented as Mike’s handwritten journal, no spell check sorry, and as he recounts his story we are immersed into his survival, his family’s well-being & survival, their losses, and his comedic/sometimes sick, inner dialog. Give it a read! You won’t regret it.
These books have brought laughter and hours of reading enjoyment into my household, and if you only knew how appreciated and amazing that is, you’d understand that no review could ever payback this author! Please read and recommend this author/this book series to your friends and family. – M.

So far this has been a good series to read. The books are written and edited well. There is lots of detail. The storyline is great and has held my attention. I like the humor in the books. Im that person that starts throwing out jokes when Im scared or worried so I get the sarcasm and humor. I gave it four stars because I find myself skimming over a lot of pages as the author tends to (the word that pops in my mind) babble. He goes on and on about things that have nothing to do with the storyline. A little of that would be okay but there is so much I have found myself skimming whole pages to get to what is really going on. Over all it is a good series and worth checking out if you like Zombie stories. Especially Zombie stories that arent the typical Zombie stories.

*COULD BE CONSIDERED SPOILERS IF YOU READ ON*

On a side note: I really cant stand the wife so far. Shes dumb and weak. She doesnt fight against the Zombies and she seems to have her head up her rear end. I really hope she toughens up and gets her head on the game in the third book. The daughter is also a mess that sits back while everyone else fights for her life. I dont know if that was what the author was aiming for with these characters but thats how they come off as. Really, with the way they are they shouldnt have survived the first couple of days.

I absolutely love the first book and I’m an avid fan of anything zombie and apocalypse. Unfortunately I did not like this one as much due to a few things. For starters there’s always an underlying sense of humor and sarcasm Unfortunately takes away from the seriousness of some of the situations, I feel like he overdoes it too often. Another thing I hate is how they never talk about the day to day today activities or food and water while it may not be that interesting it would be cool if they touched on it just a little bit. My biggest issue with this book is that he doesn’t really do a good job describing the landscape or the area they are in and the conversations during the last part in the burning house or absolutely terrible nobody is that unserious all of the time. I feel like he is just going to make so many unrealistic things happen and just drag out the series.

I have read this whole series. Please forgive me for being so slow to write a review, sometimes it just slips my mind. This is a great book. Yes it is a part of a series but Mark is so good to make sure the reader can pick up any of the books in the series and have most facts of what is going on. The way he does this in no way takes away from the continuing story. This is such a good zombie series with realistic characters. Some you will love and some you will love to hate. I also purchased all the audio books to go with them. I read or listen to these over and over. I won’t leave spoilers in my review because I don’t like when people do that to me. I can tell you that in reading this book and all in the series I “chomped at the bit” to get to the next book. Mark knows how to get you so involved in the book, you feel like you are living it with Mike Talbot, his family and friends. Grab this book and be hooked like so many of Mark’s fans! He has many other great books too, which of course I have read but probably still need to leave reviews for also. I promise to get working on that one.

Continuing with the great stuff – Little Turtle has fallen and our survivors must find safety in an impossible situation – these zombies are much more than the typical mindless undead. Theres a new strain, and they have a vendetta. Love these characters, and Tufo really has an amazing talent with dialogue and mixing in humor at the right moments. The angle with Eliza is not my favorite – I dont think its necessary and theres enough going on as it is – but thats quite subjective and only a personal opinion. Nothing wrong with it, and very well written – just more than necessary for me. Great stuff, ready for #3!!

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