Monster Island by David Wellington

I chose to do the alternative reading this week which was David Wellington's Monster Island.
I have never read a novel in this format before and it was an interesting experience. Because each "chapter" is written separately as a blog post, each chapter seems to be a short story by itself. This makes for a fast paced book that really keeps your attention.

Although I only had time to make it through the first two sections I was very intrigued and will certainly be going back to the rest of it. While it certainly isn't a super well written literary piece it is fun to read. There is constant action and lots of intertwining story lines. It will jump from one character to another with no evident connection, but the story lines slowly come come closer until the 2 characters are interacting with each other. This happened with the main character and the half human half zombie character.

This half human half zombie character has without a doubt been my favorite part of this story so far. It is a point of view that I have never encountered before. The point of view of a zombie story is always a human who is caught in the middle of spread of zombies, slashing through them without question. While that more common point of view is found in the story and the mind of zombie character is not technically completely zombie it was still sort of refreshing to get a new perspective in scenario I've heard a hundred times.

I also found it interesting that some of the story takes place in Africa. Every zombie story I have ever heard or seen has either taken place in the US or in Europe somewhere. In the story in mentions that the third world nations who had already been in turmoil and civil war were the only ones who were prepared for what happened. Theses countries already had large stockpiles of guns and ammunition, and were used to constant combat in there own backyards. I had honestly never thought about what would happen in other areas of the world during a zombie apocalypse.