Genre: YA Horror
Published: March 19, 2013 by Patchwork Press
Series: #1 (The Hitchhiker Strain)
Length: 271 pages
Source: Patchwork Press (ARC)
“After surviving a deadly plague outbreak, sixteen-year-old Savannah thought she had lived through the very worst of human history. There was no way to know that the miracle vaccine would put everyone at risk for a fate worse than un-death.
Now, two very different kinds of infected walk the Earth, intent on nothing but feeding and destroying what little remains of civilization. When the inoculated are bitten, infection means watching on in silent horror as self-control disappears and the idea of feasting on loved ones becomes increasingly hard to ignore.
Starving and forced to live inside of the abandoned high school, all Savannah wants is the chance to fight back. When a strange boy arrives with a plan to set everything right, she gets her chance. Meeting Cole changes everything. Mere survival will never be enough.”
Mortality was a good read. There’s an alternating viewpoint between our two main characters, Savannah and Zarah. I was really curious whether these two characters are related to one another, and that made me keep on reading. They’re both teenagers trying to survive the zombie craze, and finding out more about the cure being made. They were an “okay” characters. Savannah made some bad decisions, but I love how she actually wants to correct them. She doesn’t just say “sorry”; she finds a way to make them right. I liked Savanna’s character more than Zarah. I couldn’t really connect with Zarah maybe because there were more chapters on Savannah than Zarah’s. I feel like she’s just another character in a book. What I didn’t like about these two characters was that they trust so easily! They meet 2 random guys (Cole & Liam) and they took off with them. The supporting characters were alright. They were relatable at some point, but I hate how Alex (Savanna’s friend/classmate/crush) is such a coward.
What makes Mortality a different zombie book is that we also get to read from a zombie’s perspective. This was also a different read for me because there was hardly any bloody & gory scenes, unfortunately. I love reading zombie books filled with action, excitement, bloody scenes, and characters who are about to flip out & panic because they couldn’t handle the craziness anymore. The characters in this book seems like seeing a zombie is like seeing clouds.. meaning seeing a zombie passing by is normal. The decisions that they made were just bad and it was as if it wasn’t a big deal.
What I didn’t like is that Savannah and Zarah sounded alike and if the chapters didn’t have their name, I wouldn’t know which one was telling the story. I was also a little bit confused about the 1st zombie wave and the 2nd zombie wave. Why are there two waves? What happened between the two waves? There are still unanswered questions since it’s a series. Hopefully some of my questions will be answered in the next book. Overall I still enjoyed reading Mortality. The writing style was smooth and wasn’t choppy. I would recommend this if you want to read a zombie book that doesn’t have a lot of blood in it.
