So it’s a delight when one like this comes along. With many such worlds, you generally have a really good book followed by a few subsequent very mediocre to bad ones. Which brings me now to this third, and I assume, final book in this series, Chokehold.

By the time I picked up the second entry, All Roads End Here, I was a hardcore devotee and I consumed it even quicker than the first, a thing that I wouldn’t have thought possible had you warned me, but it’s true all the same That book completely dominated my imagination and I finished it in two quick sittings, turning pages so fast my fingers were practically blistering. I’m delighted to report that in this case, my doubts were completely unfounded. Returns to such franchises are often publisher cash-grabs, so I always go into them with just a touch of skepticism tempering my enthusiasm. Martin’s Press released One of Us Will Be Dead by Morning, the first book in a brand new Hater series titled “The Final War.” When Horror DNA offered it to me for review, I was both elated and slightly leery. Moody?īut sometimes good things really do come to those who (albeit grudgingly) wait and this is one of those times. And goddamn did you take your sweet time or what, Mr. One that left me longing for more like I never did for any other apocalypse tale I’ve ever read before.

So on the recommendation of some friends I very much trust in the industry, I took up Hater, the first book in a trilogy that was a total game-changer for me. Several years back I discovered the author for the first time in the form of a book called Autumn and, while that book and subsequent others in that world deal with the very subject I profess to be tired of, it is one of the best of the bunch and it got me curious about the author’s other publications. The Haters are high-functioning, thinking human beings who just happen to have a deep-seated need to viciously murder anyone they encounter who are not infected with the virus known as the Hate. These books, though they may riff a bit on the zombie theme, are in reality much different. But there is an exception to that rule and it’s the works of David Moody, in particular, the “Haters” and “The Final War” series. Almost 100% of the time, if you offer me this type of story for review, or even just to read, I’m going to reject it hands down.

So I’m an extremely hard sell when it comes to the trope.

It’s true that a thing can be done to death-or undeath-and the worst of all is the walking dead. More and more it seems like there’s nothing new or unique to be found and I don’t find the themes to be even remotely entertaining anymore. When it comes to zombies and most other end-of-the-world scenarios, I’ve become jaded and pretty much completely burnt.

David moody autumn series