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I read this for the Apocalypse Whenever book group and ended up not liking it at all. I'll admit I have some prejudices that pushed me to that assessment:

1) I really hate it when I can hear an author's opinions or point of view coming out of the mouths of his or her characters; Ian Malcom in Jurassic Park, Laszlo Kreizler in The Alienist, etc. Laszlo even *looks* like Caleb Carr. I know that authors almost always use their characters to channel some of the authors own thoughts and opinions, but when the writer uses the character as a direct mouthpiece it just looks amateurish and vain. Grant does this so blatantly that I feel I can comfortably assume she is a single, geeky, female who doesn't get along with her parents but still lives with them, drinks lots of Coke, has frequent migraines, loves cats, has given up on sex, and wishes she could wear sunglasses all the time without looking odd. No offense meant to geeks - I'm one too.

2) I'd also assume that she writes and/or reads a lot of fanfic. That was the very first impression I had when I started reading this book and 500 pages later it hadn't changed. Again, no offense meant to those who enjoy reading or writing fanfic - if you like it, go for it - but I personally don't care for the stuff. It's almost always bush league (if that), written for a niche audience, and full of errors in style and editing. This book strikes me as the product of a fanfic writer who learned to structure a novel well enough to be published.

3) Plenty of style and editing errors show through, though. It was bad enough that half way through the novel I started dog-earing pages so I could return to reference. The characters of Governor Tate and presidential candidate Ryman are so one-dimensional as to be completely unbelievable. She may as well have had Tate throttling kittens and Ryman running a baby dolphin rescue organization (hint: one of those examples is not my invention). I'm not racking my brain over it but I really can't think of an instance where I've encountered two flatter characters.

4) She should fire Matt Branstad, "who was responsible for verifying the accuracy of my firearms design..." A lot of zombie fiction fans are also interested in survivalism and are gun enthusiasts, and when it came to weapon technology the details were only superficially touched upon. The computer technology details, on the other hand (which make up a large part of the book) seemed to be top notch, believable, and well researched. Of course I have no first-hand knowledge of that kind of stuff so I have no idea if it's accurate or not.

5) Tons of lame self-aggrandizing statements like, "He was a journalist after all and we're all incurably insane." *EYEROLL*

6) She has a strange preoccupation with handshakes, describing three different characters as having handshakes that are strong but not too strong. (pg 81, 235, 399)

7) She describes a VW Thing as having airbags which they were not built with. I suppose one could have been retrofitted but there's no mention of that detail. Furthermore, you can't be pinned by an airbag.

Anyways I'm starting to sound like I'm piling on. Despite being a big fan of zombie stories I won't be picking up the sequels in this trilogy.

eta: I'd logged around 400 books on Goodreads before creating the "waste-of-paper" shelf, just for this book.