Survivors
The Morningstar Strain, Book 3
Z. A. Recht with Thom Brannan
2012
Permuted Press
Simon and Schuster
Before cracking the spine, you should realize that Survivors was completed and published posthumously. We lost Recht shortly after the release of his second novel, Thunder And Ashes and it was in doubt for many years if his Zombie Apocalypse trilogy would ever be finished. Thankfully Thom Brannan, with the blessings of Recht’s family, took the rough draft and notes Recht left behind and completed the story.
Shamblers. Sprinters. Lunatic rednecks. Survivors in Omaha. This novel has all the right elements to make it one of the best Zombie Genre stories ever told but it seemed rushed.
The style of the Zombie Apocalypse that Recht created is one of the most unique I’ve ever read. It’s a combination of infected versus undead. The destruction Recht’s plague wreaks on the world is catostrophic and Recht did an amazing job fleshing out these characters in his first and second novels. But it falls short for me as the trilogy comes to a close.
Read the entire trilogy but know that Survivors is not solely the work of Z. A. Recht.
That being said, I struggled to finish Survivors.
Pieces seemed to be left out.
The closing of plot lines seemed rushed.
Survivors’ ending left me scratching my head.
Knowing that this book is not Recht’s final vision, I can sympathize with his family wanting this story to be told but I don’t think Brannan was the best choice of “co-author”.
