Review of Disease by M.F Wahl
Review written by Casey Douglass
In my own opinion, the
mark of a truly great zombie story is that the zombies aren’t the
only threat. To varying degrees, the effectiveness of a tale depends
on whether the zombies are more a background threat whilst the soap
opera of human interactions plays out in the foreground. The risk
with this approach however, is that if you sideline the shambling
dead too much, some bright spark will ask “Why did you bother
having zombies in it at all?”
I’m happy to report
that M.F Wahl’s Disease gets the balance about right. The
zombies are an ever present threat and integral to the story, yet the
humans and their interactions are just as important.
The story begins with
Casey and Alex as they forage in an abandoned house for food and
supplies. Of course, it turns out that they are not alone and a
frantic fight with one of “The Risen” ensues. This is another
great thing about Disease. The skirmishes with the undead are
vividly described and paced very well giving you a great feeling of
the shit hitting the fan. They also happen plenty of times in the
course of the story so any gore fans should find ample here to keep
them grinning as they read.
Going back to Casey and
Alex. Alex is a young boy who doesn’t speak. Casey is his carer and
she looks out for him and worries that something might be quite
broken inside him. At times he knows what is going on, at others he
ignores things and gets lost in the details of a faucet or the
contents of his backpack. As you can guess,
someone apparently so switched off is a bit of a risk with zombies
around. They are both discovered by a party from a
nearby hotel and taken into the folds of a cult-like group which is
run by the enigmatic Lot, a devious woman who, with a mixture of
religion and fear, has a stranglehold on her followers’ minds.
To say too much more
would be to give too much away. Suffice it to say that M.F Wahl has
certainly achieved the task of showing that the zombies aren’t the
only type of monsters in the world after an apocalypse. M.F also
depicts very uncomfortable issues in just the right way, not going
too in-depth but showing enough that the reader can read between the
lines. I think that this is a great achievement and one worthy of
highlighting here.
If I did have any
criticisms, one might be that some paragraphs in the book feature
shifts in viewpoint between two characters that sometimes worked and
other times slightly disrupted my reading rhythm. This is a minor
quibble though in what otherwise is a fine book.
I give Disease 4
out of 5. It is well written, interesting and paced in a way that
will get you wondering what happens next.
Disease is being
released as a serialized novel in six parts. Part One is available
from Thursday the 18th of September with each new part
releasing every Thursday thereafter until all are out. It is also
being released in audiobook format.
You can check out W.F
Wahl’s website here for more info and places you can buy them, and
also read the first chapter for free.
