(Contains spoilers!)
Reading and reviewing this book has been a genuinely interesting and learning experience for me. It has required me to examine my personal prejudices and biases about writing, as well as reconsider my criteria for what makes a good book.
And this is a good book! I enjoyed it far more than many books I have read by “successful” and established writers.
A huge factor for me, when making a judgement about a book, is what I refer to as the writing quality. Convention dictates that a “good” book should exhibit perfect grammar, spelling and punctuation. This book does not. The text is littered with spelling mistakes, incorrect and missing words, and various typographical errors that, at first, made me think I was not going to be able to read it.
But I persevered and was richly rewarded. Z Notes is a GREAT story!
It is book 2 in a series and picks up linearly from where the previous book ends and finishes at the point where the next will begin.
There is so much to like about Z notes:
- The fast-moving, imaginative, and exciting plot. The author manages to create some real moments of tension that had me so on edge I found myself reading as fast as I could to find out what happened next.
- The witty and authentic dialogue.
- The brilliant characters – Matt and Frank remind me of a mix of Bill and Ted and Ben and Mickey from The Battery.
- The humour that made me laugh out loud in parts.
- The ZOMBIES! Oh, my goodness, we have fast ones, slow ones, big ones, small ones, blind ones, super-strong ones – we even have giant zombie crocodiles!
- The romance – both of our protagonists have romantic interests, but poor Matt seems to have fallen for a girl who … let’s just say … is not really interested in an exclusive relationship.
- The locations. One of the things I love reading (and writing about) is how familiar locations take on a new and unfamiliar feeling after the world has ended. I also like to entertain myself by imagining how different settings would lend themselves to the purpose of escape and evasion, or survival, in a Zombie Apocalypse. Z notes does this exceptionally well. Matt and Frank find themselves in a variety of different everyday settings and the author plays with how the features of these settings might come into play in a Zombie conflict scenario. We have a farm, a ballpark, a construction site, a multi-story car park, a train yard and many more.
- The vivid and atmospheric scene setting and images.
- The hilarious chapter titles – “Farm House e-i-e-i-o.”
- The use of some excellent metaphors and descriptions:
- “they could swear they heard the grass squeak under their feet.”
- “you could hear a mouse peeing on cotton.”
- “the smell of hot trash in summer.”
As well as all that, it has everything you would expect to find in any good Zombie tale, including gore, violence, heroism, and a wide variety of lethal weapons.
The ending was both intriguing, in terms of what they find on the other side of the fence, and shocking, when Matt finally gives Kimberly her comeuppance and an uncharacteristically brutal act of revenge.
I know it’s not the same, but when someone like Bernardine Evaristo writes without capitalisation and punctuation, she can call it prose poetic patterning and win a Booker Prize. I doubt that writers like Shawn and I could carry this off.
The debate about whether grammar and spelling are “elitist” rages on, and I don’t want to get into that here. Not do I want to make assumptions about the author of Z Notes, other than to say that it would be a sad day if a few issues with grammar, punctuation and spelling were to have prevented this highly entertaining story from being told.
Let me just end by saying that a good story is a good story and leave it at that!
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