A promising start
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Ibarra is not a professional writer, just a man that enjoys writing stories and is fulfilling a dream of being published. For all his efforts the book culd have been also worse. On the other hand it could have been better and is far from the best in the genre.
George returning to the school where he teaches to fetch a gift from his late girlfirend was a nice human touch (to me at least), irrational and placing him in some mortal danger. In times of great stress and strife, we are not the most rational of beings, proven time and again throughout this book and others in the genre.
While short on substance in places, I did feel for some of the characters and somethings wondered if we really needed to know every last detail of them being eaten alive. Some of the detailing is very gratuitous and while I am a gore fan, I thought some went a little overboard.
The FEMA camps and initial reactions to the plague did have me reminiscing over other disasters that have happened in the USA (and some of these are also mentioned!), so it makes me wonder how many of Ibarra's on personal views made it into the book, seeing how he's placed as much of his own personal experiences into it.
The flashback of Georges' girlfriends death wasn't needed, but it did add about 8 ages to the books length. The reason I thought it's not needed though is because it gives away to much. The mystery should have been kept there so some parts of the book are not ruined by the early spoiler.
A promising first book and I look forward oto reading the second in the series with hopes of seeing further books from him in the future.
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Please dont buy this!!
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This is a VERY simplistic, shallow attempt at a book. It centres around a character with the same attributes as the book itself whose name is George. You are not likely to forget this as the author uses his name a MILLION times. George this, George that... It is actually quite unbelievable that no other review mentions this and that whoever proof read this didnt alter it.
I couldnt get to the end of this book.
Dont waste your money.
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Says nothing, and with bad grammar!
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As a fan of the zombie genre the generally positive reviews for this book made me decide to try it. Mr. Ibarra is evidentally not a professional writer, so kudos to him for having the determination to get himself published. However, his book is very poorly written (grammar is especially bad), his characters shallow, and his setpieces and encounters, written one suspects to satisfy gorehounds alone, fail to ring true. Even in a book of a fantasy nature, the suspension of disbelief is vital. Here, the many flaws kept yanking me back into the real world to question the whats and whys of the plot.
No amount of pop-culture references (and there are plenty) or blunt swipes at the establishment (Romero and Max Brooks both do it far better and with much more intelligence and research) can fool the audience into thinking that what is effectively pulp slash fiction has any sort of gravitas or message. Ibarra fails on this count, try as he might to follow in the footsteps of those who have made the zombie genre a successful allegory for all manner of contemporary issues and therefore so appealing to a fanbase beyond those who just like to see dead people bite chunks out of folk.
This failure aside, the author could probably have got by with a simple horror tale if his plot and pace weren't so clunky. Three examples from early on spring to mind. The main protagonist, George, who Ibarra goes to great lengths to explain was a mild-mannered and sentimental school teacher just the day before, coldbloodedly murders a policeman for issuing parking tickets by running him down, and then gleefully describes the physical process of what happens to the poor copper's body as it goes beneath the car (he evidentally likes the effect, as he later runs over a zombie in similar detail). The teacher's lack of remorse is explained away glibly with a throwaway line about how, in a zombie apocalypse, sentiment is a killer. A potential source of great insight is swept to one side so our George has a carte-blanche for quilt-free goremaking. The repeated heavy-handed emphasis that all uniformed people are corrupt, bad and not to be trusted makes one wonder if Mr. Ibarra has a history with authority! Maybe this is the first zombie novel to be written in revenge for parking tickets?
Even less credible is how George is drawn to the school at which he worked to retrieve a sentimental item from his late girlfriend. Fair enough, but to explain why he puts himself in such danger, Ibarra concocts an unintentionally hilarious flashback that lasts a whole chapter as she is forced to consume cocaine by a borderline racist caricature of a Hispanic sadist, overpowers two cops on his payroll, and dies of a gunshot wondering what her wedding would have been like. Brilliant, especially when he ends the sequence with a line noting that it was all covered up and that George would never have any idea that any of it happened! So why put it in then??? It has nothing to do with anything else in the book, and feels like an amateur stab at writing Scarface 2.
Shortly afterwards, George meets and rescues another teacher, a female one, from zombies - very decomposed, maggot infested ones (despite the crisis only being a few days old). After both cave in heads and then vomit profusely, Ibarra decides to tell us that George notices she is wearing girly clothes, and both do the beast with two backs amongst the rotting corpses that had just made them both puke in a love scene that is as sudden and unbelievable as it is unerotic and funny.
As the book continues it unfolds like a 15-year old's stab at an English exam ("Question 1 - write a zombie novel"), with each scenario evidentally having been written on the fly without a plan or structure as they appear to have popped into the author's mind and he has deemed them cool enough to add.
A shame, as at the core there are some decent ideas, albeit all built on the back of others who have set the lore of the genre. There is certainly nothing new here. Ultimately the book is aimed squarely at zombie fans (Ibarra rarely describes the creatures, as he evidentally assumes you must know in your mind what a zombie already looks like). Max Brooks' World War Z and Kirkman/Adlard's The Walking Dead remain the best examples of intelligent and compelling zombie literature. I would recommend them instead.
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down the road on a well trodden path
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I've read a great deal of apocalyptic zombie fiction lately and this is probably the book I liked least. I was very excited after reading the introduction by another author (forgot his name sorry) when they said they had not been effected so much by a book since Stephen Kings 'The Long Walk'. I loved 'The Long Walk', its one of my favorite short stories ever,it effected me so much that in my copy in pencil at the end is written 'and they all sat down and had a nice rest'. Do not take the introduction in this book seriously, the man who wrote it is wrong.
There is nothing wrong with the story, its well paced and the plot is sensible if not a bit staid and well trodden. However there were a few things wrong with it that annoyed me to the extent that I had to write about its flaws. Firstly this genre has been covered extensively over the past few years and for me Ibarra doesn't bring enough new to the party to satisfy my critical appetite. To his credit he explores the theoretical role of the FEMA camps set up by the US government in a very cynical way and some of his observations are well thought out in his description of their governance in such an emergency. However the down side is that I was not scared by the situations the character found himself in, the zombies were almost a second issue to the whole plot, with just occasional run of the mill gory descriptions to try and add substance to them. Sometimes the same description was given 2 or 3 times, like 'he exploded his heart' when someone was shot. The thing that grated most on my nerves was the gratuitous tacked on sex scenes, he may as well of written, 'oh terrible this plague isn't it?' 'yes it is, do you fancy a shag on this desk here?', 'yes might as well, might be dead tomorrow, go out with a bang eh what?'. I may be over critical but i've read some very good books in this genre (Autumn series to name one), and Ibarra's apocalyptic world just is not frightening enough because there is hardly any substance to it. Its a pulp gore filled zombie novel, so if you like them then you might find something to like in this, but if you want some substance then read Moody or Keene.
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Zombie lovers will not be disappointed
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'Down the Road' is a masterpiece of zombie literature from author Bowie Ibarra.
The story, set in modern day America, is the tale of George Zaragosa, a school teacher who longs to return to his home in San Uvalde from his teaching post in Austin. This sounds like a simple task, but when you throw in hordes of the living Dead, hell-bent government officials, power mad militia as well as a world that has imploded on itself, the reader is in for a real treat, with plenty of ups and downs along the way for the stories main character.
The story is action packed from start to finish, with sub plots and twists around every turn. The tale is never lacking in detailed gore, as well as relationships forming, and tensions breaking.
Bowie Ibarra invites us into his terrifying world of a human race that has been let loose upon itself. Throw in the massive hordes of undead and FEMA outposts that resemble WW2 concentration camps, and this is a story that should not be missed.
This story is a real treat. Any lover of the zombie genre, that includes work from Romero, Raimi, Argento, etc should not miss out on 'Down the Road.' Ibarra's work ranks up there highly with the rest of the living dead genre.
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