While I still enjoyed the book, the change in narration style from the first two in the series was a little off putting as I really liked it. Plus, to be honest, almost every zombie story falls apart when they try to explain how zombies happened. Still worth reading. ( )

We've replaced the zombie tactics of the first two books with more explicit right wing tendencies and a mishmash of government/alien/other (spoilers!) conspiracies and half-baked concepts.

I found it entertaining, heh, despite objectively being a step down from the previous two, which were good enough, with the help of their narrative gimmick, to be worthwhile. ( )

I just can't get enough of this series. Nowhere else can you get not only zombies, add in alligators, and the kicker is...toss in a robot! If you are a fan of The Walking DEAD, this will be right up your alley.

After reading this series, I want to read everything J.L. Bourne writes. ( )

This was a slog. Three stars is a gift. I am invested in the characters based on the previous two novels, which were excellent. In the beginning I enjoyed the militaristic strategy the protagonists, Kilroy, took to surviving the zombie apocalypse; it's what kept him and the people he found along the way alive for as long as they have been. It was enough to make sense why he survived and was able to help people along the way; creating a community of survivors.

This novel took away the connection with the characters, changed the plot, made it slightly convoluted and ramped up the military aspect to 1,000. This novel is 80 percent military jargon and operations now, as Kil and his group encounter a working branch of military and he, as an enlisted man, is pushed back into service.

While I am still very invested in the characters and would like to see where this goes, but who knows what fresh hell the next installment will bring. ( )

Shattered Hourglass by J. L. Bourne is the third book in his zombie apocalypse story. I loved both the first two books but found this third entry didn’t hold my attention quite as well. The main difference was that the first two were written in first person as journal entries and this one was in third person and jumped around between a number of groups so not as concentrated on one person’s survival tactics.

The world has fallen to the walking undead but there are a few remnants of mankind left. The story jumps around from a US aircraft carrier, a US nuclear submarine, a remote scientific lab in the Arctic and the nuclear silo in Texas called Hotel 23 that was the setting for most of book number two. Top secret government conspiracies in the form of the shadowy group, calling itself Remote Six play a part in this story as well.

I believe this was meant to be the final book in the trilogy, but there now has been a fourth book added. Hopefully this fourth book will give us a more definite ending and will concentrate more on the original main character’s survival plans. There was a lot of story to be covered in this book and it actually comes across rather rushed, I enjoy a fast paced story, but the speed in this one was breathtaking, giving one the impression that the author had lost interest in the story and just wanted to finish it. To use one of the author’s favorite words, I am hoping this “anomaly” changes before I read the fourth book. ( )