Yes folks, these 300 some pages of unrelenting mayhem, gore and violence almost proved too much for me. Remains of the Dead by Iain McKinnon is the sequel to Domain of the Dead which I read last year. I was disappointed when the first book left me hanging but this time around it was the despair and the darkness that was hard to handle. I like zombie stories, but I also like my characters to have even a small amount of hope for the future.

Instead of picking up where the last book left off, this book went all the way back to the beginning when the military helicopter arrived in the city to find a group of survivors. Unable to take all of them to the ship, a couple of soldiers and a civilian volunteered to stay until the helicopter could come back and pick them up. The story follows this group of survivors in their quest to stay alive until rescue can arrive.

I don’t read zombie books because they have literary merit, I read them for the adventure, the thrill and the survival tactics. Remains of the Dead had all of this in spades so really deserves a better rating from me, but this time I found the bleakness a little too much. Now having read the first two books and with the story still completely unresolved, I will probably forge ahead and read the third volume although the title of Demise of the Living doesn’t seem offer much hope. ( )