You Get What You Pay For

Circus of the Dead by Seth Blackburn

Horror

You know the old saying, "you get what you pay for"?  This is a free book on Amazon for Kindle, so you do the math.

Gabriel is a young man who is looking for some excitement with his friends in a post-apocalyptic zombie world.  They live in a very structured society and when the Reverend forbids his parishioners to see a local traveling circus, that just ensures Gabriel and his friends will go.

The ending was one of the worse I've ever read.  Here's how I knew it was over--there were no more pages.  No denouement, no resolution.  Just, the end. Dissatisfying.  It wasn't that I hated this book.  I just didn't like it.  It felt very amateurish and quickly done.

This book reminded me of Darrell Shan's series, Cirque Du Freak.  Same exact plot, substituting zombies for vampires.  Unlike Cirque Du Freak, this is much too inappropriate for teen readers.  It is chock full of foul language and drug references as well as being sexually suggestive and very violent.

I suppose my biggest pet peeve with books like this is that they are so focused on the topic that a focus on good writing goes right out the window.  Everyone is rushing to write and read zombie books right now because zombies are 'in'.  But, still, there has to be a good effort to make a good story. 

Thankfully, it was a very short read.  I will not be reading anymore books by this author and will continue the search for a good zombie tale.