Book Review - Extinction Shadow by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

Extinction Shadow by Nicholas Sansbury Smith
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐ (3 of 5 stars)

You should read this if: You've already read the first series. Or if you're just down for a shoot-em-up zombie story.

You should not read this if: You don't like being confused at new characters. Or if you're looking for a good story.

Despite the author's note before the book that this series is for old and new readers alike, it simply was not enjoyable for a newcomer unfamiliar with the multitude of characters. The author does a fine job of ramping new readers up to the state of the world and the mechanics of the variants, but there are simply too many characters that seem too similar to remember, and it was difficult creating a mental picture of all of these characters (who I presume were introduced at greater length in the first series). Possibly exacerbated by the audiobook medium, I especially had difficulty figuring out the parent-children relationships - "Who is Javier's dad? Who is Timothy's dad? Is it Jake? Oh it's not? Who's Jake?" The men in the book are largely interchangeable, and the macho-man hero trope is simply too overused.

Similarly, this book doesn't orient the reader to the setting of each chapter, and I had trouble having any sense of both the spatial and temporal context, especially because the characters seemed to teleport to new locations between chapters. Where exactly is this island place? Where is the capitol where the President is located (I still have no idea)? The only person that I could place reliably was Fischer, who was very clearly from Texas. The book spends no time on physical travel, which disoriented me as a reader and actually made the book feel slower-paced than likely intended. From start to finish of the book, what is the length of time that transpires? For some characters, it seems like it's essentially 2 days (Fischer, President). But for others (Team Ghost), it must be at least a week, as they flew around the country.

Finally, this book lacked an arch (feel like I've been saying that a lot recently). It's not as big a knock on this book, because I think it's more by design, even if I personally find it a copout to have a 7-book series which is essentially just a single long story. But having completed the book which felt like a lengthy intro, there is very little payoff or satisfaction.

The book wasn't unenjoyable, but I imagine I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had read the previous books. 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3.

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