Jess's Reviews > The First Days

As a woman with a taste for apocalypse stories, I went into this novel with high hopes. After the first two chapters, I knew I should stop reading but I finished anyway. What spurred me on was the potential this book had - two female protagonists who survive and flourish during a zombie apocalypse? Count me in!

Unfortunately, the quality of the prose was severely lacking. Frater often repeats herself and falls into the age-old trap of telling, not showing when it comes to emotion and character development. There are often lengthy asides into a character's thoughts and feelings that are boring and derail the action while failing to advance their development or flesh out their characterization. While Katie had some consistency throughout the novel, Jenni had no clearly defined characterization and behaves in whatever way suits the author's needs in the scene.

As for the action, it lacked the true tension between survival and certain death. Some moments were certainly fraught with danger, but overall, things always seemed to work out too conveniently for the ladies. Accepting the impending apocalypse early with enough time to escape the city, befriending a gun store owner and his sniper wife, finding a city with a fully constructed fort right as they run out of gas -- their serendipitous luck leaves much of the action flat and unexciting.

The novel also deals peripherally with queerness in Katie, a bisexual woman who choses to pass as gay. Slurs are often thrown her way, and she is threatened with corrective rape more than once. A romantic relationship with Jenni, whom she shares a close friendship with, is played off as a joke. There are some people of color who play minor roles, but their representation relies heavily on stereotypes.

With bland characters, bland action, no plot-driven narrative, and poor writing, I will neither be recommending or rereading this book.