Sunday 1 March 2015

Eve Brenner: Zombie Girl by Alessia Giacomi

Hey Guys!
Joe here with another review for you all!
Today I’m going to be reviewing Alessia Giacomi’s book ‘Eve Brenner: Zombie Girl’

Here’s a bit of the blurb to get you intrigued:

Eve used to be an ordinary girl, from an ordinary town, with ordinary dreams, but her dreams rapidly turn into nightmares when one grave mistake leaves her a little less than human and a lot less average. 
Eve’s not quite the same girl she used to be. She desperately clings to her humanity as new desires, new abilities, and new urges take over with each passing day. 
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I was sent an e-book copy of this by the author for an honest review.

The story, in my opinion, was quite a generic story with a good undertone during certain scenes, especially the fighting/zombie scenes.

I enjoyed the way that the author created the origin for the zombie virus, which intertwined the original zombie style we all know and love and a twist of Egyptian history.
The disease was cleverly written in, though there was a ton of foreshadowing before hand; I did enjoy how the author linked the events of Dr August’s work colleague almost being chomped by a zombie in a room surrounded by hieroglyphs of hawks on every wall, then becoming a Zombie himself after a ton of Hawks peck his face practically off, which transmits the disease to the work colleague. There is a little bit more information about these scenes but I won’t spoil all of it.

The story was pretty solid mostly all of the way through, until the ending, it suddenly started to break down in terms of enthusiasm? I felt as if the author went for a generic ending, which wasn’t great honestly as it made the book seem very Deus Ex Machina in a way. There were also quite a few cringe worthy and cheesy bits during the final few chapters… some that weren’t really needed atal.
I did enjoy the middle section that involved quite heavy fight scenes and a more intense zombie structure.

I did enjoy the premise of the story though, like how a zombie could contract the Azreal virus and become like Eve, super strong and have enhanced healing powers, this allowed for a strong dynamic during the fight scenes and the dramatising of the characters and their scenes.
And it was a good take on how a person with this virus explains and feels the changes from Zombie to Human. I did like that aspect on it as normally these days we see how people would survive during a zombie apocalypse and not how a human/zombie couldn’t retain a zombie apocalypse especially one which could be created by them.

I didn’t like how it was all in first person either, as I didn’t feel connected to any character during it due to the fact most of the context was stated ‘I said’. I mean, for example in Cam’s paragraphs we see Eve show emotion but since the paragraph is focused on Cam, I felt as if we should feel so much more from emotion him?
This goes for the other two aswell; I didn’t feel the raw emotion that you would if it was written in Third person.

I also didn’t catch the bit when Cam and Eve become Boyfriend and Girlfriend, I mean yes they do kiss in a couple of scenes but that doesn’t automatically make you Boyfriend/Girlfriend even if you have liked that person for as long as they did. It would’ve seemed so much more realistic if they actually had an ickle romance scene… it would’ve been stupidly cheesy, but way more convincing.

Okay… so, I kind-of didn’t really like any of the main characters in this, I could tolerate Eve but that was about it.
Don’t get me wrong, they were good characters, but I felt as if they were very stereotypical characters?

Eve was the MAIN character we followed through this book as the Zombie virus was passed onto her, automatically we focus upon her as the strong, badass female, which she is, again don’t get me wrong but I felt as if her ‘badass-ness’ wasn’t at the fullest potential the author could create.

But she is also this hot headed girl who always seems to know what to say and what to do in certain situations, even if the situation seems so unrealistic and very fabricated, in the sense of a fictional reality.
Also… she does get a tad few creepy thoughts towards cam at the end of the book…
Nether-the-less, Eve was possibly my favourite character out of the three.

Alex was Eve’s best friend and was the ‘pretty’ one of the trio.
I can’t say that Alex did much during this book but act as the middle-woman between Cam and Eve’s relationship.
I don’t really know what to say about Alex as she didn’t really do much, I mean yes she was at the dig site and helped Eve when she turned a few times, but she mostly comforted Eve when her and Cam kept falling out.

Cam… Ugh… honestly, I’ve never been so annoyed at a character in my entire life…
I didn’t like how the author made him out to be this Manly character saying things like ‘I choke back the some tears at the thought. I’m a man, after all’ Like seriously you can still be manly if you cry, its just an emotion? I get why the author has done it, to make Cam seem like a masculine guy but it doesn’t work honestly.
And considering his dad was an alcoholic/abuser, the way he snaps and hurts women the way he does questions his Manliness, like he punches a girl in the tit… don’t do that, that’s not cool, considering the weight difference between these two characters (one being a tall lean man, the other being an average height and average build girl, from what I perceived) he could’ve just pushed her off of him with a slight amount of added force?
I don’t know… I just felt as if the author tried to glorify this character, as he was a love interest, while subtly glossing over the fact he was literally his father, even though he didn’t want to become him.

Overall, I did enjoy this story, as it was a fun and quick read.
The zombie element of the book is great and refreshing, but I did feel as if it turned into an Urban-Fantasy type of book rather than this action-y/horror-y type of deal.

You can purchase a copy of the book here:


Thank you so much to the author for supplying me with a copy of this book!
I also have the sequel so look for that in the near future.

Thanks for reading this!
Joe :)

   

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