Afterlife by S.P Cloward (Review)

Release date: September 11 2012

Publisher: S.P. Cloward

Number of pages: 268

My rating: 4/5

Holy crap, this was awesome! I was honestly not looking forward to reading this. I tend to avoid zombies on a whole, because they turn to be boring. And they creep me out. I was so wrong about this book.

Afterlife is about an ancient race of people (Mortuis) who have a special gene that prevents the soul from severing from the body when they die prematurely. They operate in organisations. Wes, our main character becomes one of them and joins a mortui organisation called Afterlife. He learns how to be a Mortui, including how to feed by sucking the life out of a person. Everything with a rival organisation called the Atumra sort of goes a bit pear shaped after that as Seth, an important person in Atumra start's disturbing the relationship between Mortuis and humans (or antemorts).

The idea for this book was so original. There aren't many zombie books, but most of them feature lifeless corpses that amble around pointlessly trying to eat people's brains.

Booringg....

The zombies here were so different! They were smart and alert, and instead of eating people's brains, they lived off the life in people. This was original take on zombies, and I really liked it.

The only part where the book fell short were the characters. The characters were good, but every single one was underdeveloped and a little flat. I liked Wes, Seth, Emily, Jez and Meri. I felt that Wes especially needed way more development, being our main character and all. After finishing, I don't really know about his previous life or who he really is. What was his job? Who were his friends? What was the relationship with his family? Answering those questions and more can help bring life to all the characters.

Emily was just awesome.

And Seth was an amazing villian, but like Wes, he needed more development to truly bring life to his role.

The pacing is a little on the slower side, which isn't nessecarily a bad thing. Keep in mind that if you're looking for a book with a breakneck pace with a load of action, this probably isn't the book for you. It's slower, but this is done well, and I never felt bored while reading it.

The quality of the writing was very good. I often have a problem with books that use alternating points of view, but here is was done very well. With self published books, the quality of writing and editing can be awful, but the quality of this book was awesome!

I really liked this book, and I'll definitely be getting the next book in the series.