My initial reaction to the ending of Quarantined was Noooooooo!
If you’ve read it, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
I’m going to try and do this review without spoiling it for those of you haven’t had the chance, in the hopes that you’ll get your hands on a copy and give it a whirl.
As I told Michael, two seconds after my initial reaction, my second reaction was, Always leave them wanting more.
And Michael does that in spades (and, fortunately, he has assured me that Book One is just the beginning).
The situation that the town finds itself in at the outset of the story is a typical zombie outbreak situation. No one is quite sure what’s going on and why there are these people that are into eating the flesh of the living.
By the time we meet a character by the name of Cormac, we are in a completely different story. We are in a world within a world, a noir world within a zombie world.
It was at this point that Michael revealed why it must be that noir/crime and zombie fiction are my two favorite genres.
As James Ellroy likes to boil down noir, that is to say, You’re Fucked, the same can be applied to zombie fiction. No matter how long or how far you run, eventually you have to face the horde.
The two genres are so very close in what they ultimately are about that this revelation really smacked me upside the head to the point of saying, Duh!
I was extremely happy to see the noir angle be played up in Quarantined.
But Michael wasn’t even close to being finished with the roller coaster effect. And the rug would be pulled out from under us when we learned the real reason behind why some people are eating other people.
I won’t give it away but I will say that I can’t recall this being used as a plot device before in any of the zombie fiction that I’ve read, comics or otherwise, or any zombie flick I’ve ever seen.
I’ve been a big fan of zombie fiction ever since a friend of mine (hey, Jeff!) turned me on to The Walking Dead.
And, for a while there, I loved The Walking Dead like it was a family member.
But somewhere along the way (I contend that it was issue 68 where the train left the rails), The Walking Dead went into the toilet.
Let me be clear about this:
Quarantined is not The Walking Dead.
Quarantined kicks The Walking Dead’s ass sixteen different ways.
