Preparations by Mark Mills
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Horror, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (10 pages)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Reviewed by AstilbeRonald T. Turner is prepared for anything. And the zombies are prepared for him.
It’s one thing to read about a character who is well-prepared for a zombie uprising, but I’d never thought about what would happen if the zombies planned ahead, too!
Ronald was a complex guy. I admired him for thinking things through so well before the events of the first scene happened. He was obviously someone who had put a lot of effort into planning for just about everything that could go wrong when zombies began to take over the world. This sharp attention to detail in other parts of his life sometimes irritated me, but I liked the fact that his flaw was such a practical and understandable one. If he were a real person, I’d expect him to behave exactly the way he did in this tale.
I would have liked to see more attention paid to the pacing of this story. While it was a short one, I did notice that there was a lot of variation in how quickly it moved from one scene to the next. Sometimes there was so much going on that I had a little trouble keeping up, while in other scenes Ronald didn’t seem to have quite enough to keep him busy considering the fact that he was in the middle of a zombiepocalypse of all things. A little more attention paid to this detail would have lead me to choosing a much higher rating.
With that being said, the ending was fabulous. Not only did it show off the main character’s longterm obsession with this specific type of monster, it featured something that I’ve never seen anyone else do in this genre. While I obviously can’t go into detail about the twist without giving away spoilers, I enjoyed being surprised by what Ronald was able to come up with when his future was looking bleak.
Preparations should be read by anyone who loves the zombie genre.
Speak Your Mind