Dark Days (Apocalypse Z Book Two) by Manel Loureiro

 

Dark Days (Apocalypse Z Book Two by Manel Loureiro.

Released 8th October 2013 by Brilliance Audio.

Translated by Pamela Carmel.

Narrated by Nick Podehl.

7 hours and 41 minutes listening time.

From the cover:

As the dead prey on the living…

The end of the world has come not with a bang or a whimper, but with the guttural snarl of walking corpses hungry for human flesh. The "lucky" survivors flee an unstoppable virus spreading death and societal collapse across the globe.

The living prey on one another….

As the rules of civilization crumble, a lawyer, a pilot, and a nurse become comrades-in-arms in the fight against extinction. But not every enemy wears a rotting face, and anyone who doesn’t have your back just might have your head. Humankind’s twilight is at hand, and these are indeed...dark days.

***********

Our little band of survivors - the unnamed lawyer, the Ukrainian pilot Prit, seventeen-year-old Lucia, the nun Sister Cecelia, and Lucullus the cat - have managed to escaped from northern Spain, in a salvaged helicopter, after numerous unpleasant incidents battling the tide of zombies produced by the unstoppable pandemic unleashed upon the world.

But their quest to find refuge in the Canary Islands drops them right into the centre of a situation much more complex than expected. After an eventful quarantine period, they are confronted with the truth that life here is not going to be easy - resources are growing scarce, and political unrest constantly threatens to break out into open civil war. But at least they are safe from the undead... or are they?

The lawyer and Prit find themselves reluctantly heading back to Spain as part of a military operation to gather medicines in Madrid, while the others remain in Tenerife to facing problems of their own...

Dark Days picks up the story of the unnamed lawyer and his little band of friends almost seamlessly from the ending of book one, The Beginning of the End. They hoped to find refuge in the Canary Islands, but sanctuary brings with it a whole host of new challenges they had not anticipated.

The story unfurls mostly from the gripping journal entries of the lawyer from Pontevedra, as before, but in a twist on the format there are supplementary narratives from the point of view of Lucia (now in a relationship with the lawyer, despite an age-gap that is a little uncomfortable), as well as from a corrupt guard with a grudge. Loureiro also spices things up with a rather unsettling glimpse into the thought processes of the undead. The addition of a concise summary at the beginning of the book gives a welcome over-view of the rise of the undead and fall of civilisation too, and this is backed up by more detail about the infected as the story develops.

I must admit, I did miss the intensity of a single narrative that keeps you constantly on the edge-of-your-seat, however, the way the story diverges does mean you need more than one perspective to keep you on top of everything going on in parallel in Tenerife and in Madrid - and to get into the nitty gritty of the themes the story throws up in terms of survival in the longer term.  

While I do not think this is quite as fresh and compelling as book one, Nick Podehl's narration is just as enjoyable, as is the translation by Pamela Carmel. The flow of the story is more fragmented, given the split narrative, but there is more than enough action and excitement to keep you invested, especially once the lawyer and Prit are back in the thick of their battles with the undead at the same time as things take a menacing turn for Lucia in Tenerife. And there is a jaw-dropping cliff-hanger that draws you into the final part of the trilogy, The Wrath of the Just. Onwards to book three I go to discover the fate that awaits these characters... and the world.

Dark Days is available to buy now in paperback, ebook and audio formats. Ebook and audio currently included with a Kindle Unlimited subscription.

About the author:

An international bestselling author, Manel Loureiro was born in Pontevedra, Spain, and studied law at Universidad de Santiago de Compostela. After graduation, he worked in television, both on-screen (appearing on Television de Galicia) and behind-the-scenes as a writer. Apocalypse Z, his first novel, began as a popular blog before its publication, eventually becoming a bestseller in several countries, including Spain, Italy, and Brazil. Manel has written three novels in the Apocalypse Z series. He currently resides in Pontevedra, Spain, where, in addition to writing, he is still a practicing lawyer.