What’s Among The Dead About?
Seattle is under siege by masses of living dead, and the military struggles to prevent the virus from spreading outside the city.
Kate is tired of sitting around. When she learns that a rescue mission is heading back into the chaos, she jumps at the chance to tag along and put her unique skill set and, more importantly, swords to use.Lester finds a new way to deal with the situation: ignore reality with drugs. When he manages to find himself threatened, he joins with an unlikely ally to take the fight to the dead.
Meanwhile, Mike makes use of his journalistic skills to find the source of the virus, in the process discovering a way to escape the city. Two mysterious words fuel his mad quest: Lazarus Black.
Our Among The Dead Review
Timothy Long’s novel, Among the Dead picks up with the characters from the previous book, Among the Living, as they attempt to escape the nightmare that Seattle has become. With the infected or deaders as they’re referred to, right outside the gates of the stadium that has now become a refugee center, there is little to do but wait for the inevitable.
The military has formed a security cordon in hopes that they can contain the spread of the infection. But, there’s little hope that will happen. Kate, the sword welding, serial killer hears of a rescue mission outside the secure environment of the stadium and wrangles a slot on the team. Mike, still reeling from the loss of his wife, wanders aimlessly inside the mass of humanity until he encounters Nelson, an Army officer who knows, somewhat, what is going on outside the fence and what will be happening to Seattle if containment is not achieved.
Lester, also inside the fence meets back up with Grinder and the terrible twosome find a way to get back outside and into the mess which appears to be their forte. Of course, Lester brings his stash with him.
Long’s writing is telling each character’s adventure as a separate chapter. This works out pretty well and establishes the course of the story while adhering to the plot. The interaction between the various characters is not repeated when they have contact with another character. What I mean is that if Kate is talking to Mike inside the stadium, when its Mike’s chapter, the reader is not put through the torture of retelling the same events only from Mike’s perspective.
Among the Dead is a compelling story that engages the reader in such as way as you feel that you’re right there when Kate lops off a head or Mike tries to get onto the evacuation train. The writing style puts you into the parking lot with Lester, Grinder, and LeBeau as they try to get inside a condemned building before the deaders breach the parking lot fence or the military drops a FAE on the city.
Timothy Long is a Seattle based writer and his use of landmarks, locations, and streets are a nice touch to realism for any reader that lives in the Pacific Northwest. If you’ve read Among the Living then be sure to add Among the Dead to your must read list. If you haven’t read Among the Living, then add of these books to your must read list, you won’t be disappointed.
