Books I've Been Reading: No Easy Hope

Details:
Type: Kindle e-book purchased here from Amazon.
Price: $2.99
Date finished: January 14, 2011
Rating (out of 5 stars): 3 stars (I liked it)
Synopsis from Goodreads:

My name is Eric Riordan. Once, I was a wealthy man leading a comfortable, easy life. Then my old friend Gabriel told me how the world would end. Gabriel tried to help me. He taught me everything he learned as a Scout Sniper in the Marine Corps. All the hard lessons from years spent in the sand choked battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. I did everything I could to prepare. I thought I was ready.

I was wrong.

When the Outbreak came, it destroyed everything. The dead rose to consume the living, and all that mankind spent so many millennia working to build was laid to waste in a matter of months. The undead spared no one, leaving only ashes and death in their wake.

For those of us still alive, every single day is a struggle. In spite of the danger, and the darkness, I still believe there is a chance that the human race can rebuild. If I can make my way North and enlist Gabriel’s help, maybe we can find enough people to start over again. It won’t be easy, though. I have to make my way across the ruins of the old world, and along the way my will to live, my humanity, and my very soul will be tested.

I have food, I have a pickup truck, and I have my trusty rifle. Most importantly, I have hope. Hope is a powerful thing, but I will need much more than that if I am to survive the dead.

This is the beginning. This is my story.

My review:

I'm a lover of zombie movies so I thought I'd give it a go and read my first zombie book. I have to say, I wasn't very impressed with this book. I found myself thinking about abandoning ship a few times in the beginning, but I hate doing that so I was determined to at least make it to the middle and then decide whether to call it quits. Well, it wasn't until I was half way through the book that it finally got interesting. The whole first half was extremely predictable with the main character making preparations for a zombie outbreak then making his journey to his friend's house after the outbreak. 

Which leads me to the thought, how can one make a zombie book unpredictable anyway? I mean, the outbreak happens, people try to survive and form a new society. There's not much else to work with, right? Maybe this is a good read for real die-hard zombie fans because isn't it the whole preparing for a zombie attack and surviving what makes people love the idea so much? But anyway, the main character was just kind of eh for me and I didn't even feel a connection to him.

Now since this is book 1, I feel like I have to read the 2nd book just to know what the heck happens and if it gets any better, but from my research, it hasn't been released yet. I don't see myself adding the 2nd book to my to-read list anytime soon. I have lots of other books I want to read first. Sorry!

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