Book Review: Under a Graveyard Sky, by John Ringo
A zombie apocalypse at sea, fought by the most improbable teenage girl since Buffy.
Baen, 2013, 367 pages
Zombies are real. And we made them. Are you prepared for the zombie apocalypse? The Smith family is, with the help of a few marines.
When an airborne "zombie" plague is released, bringing civilization to a grinding halt, the Smith family, Steven, Stacey, Sophia and Faith, take to the Atlantic to avoid the chaos. The plan is to find a safe haven from the anarchy of infected humanity. What they discover, instead, is a sea composed of the tears of survivors and a passion for bringing hope.
For it is up to the Smiths and a small band of Marines to somehow create the refuge that survivors seek in a world of darkness and terror. Now with every continent a holocaust and every ship an abattoir, life is lived under a graveyard sky.
John Ringo's books have never particularly appealed to me, so my only knowledge of his writing until now was the infamous Oh John Ringo no, which made me think his books might be entertaining in an OMG!Awful kind of way if I was in the mood for something one level of skeeviness up from Slave Girl of Gor.
Then this new series came out. Zombie apocalypse? Okay, I have to admit, zombie apocalypses are like brain candy to me, like a red-headed stepchild of space opera, another genre I love even though it's so often so very stupid. And the main characters are crazy prepper gun-nuts who are actually ready for a zombie apocalypse. Since I've also been reading a bunch of survivalist novels lately, I figured "Okay, sure, let's give it a go."
Under a Graveyard Sky does not waste any time getting to the action. In chapter one, our fearless protag gets a cryptic message from his brother using a prearranged code that tells him to grab the wife and kids and bug out. (The homage to Alas, Babylon is explicitly mentioned.) Their doomsday plan is to get on a yacht and head out to sea, where they will wait out whatever the apocalypse might be.
The Smiths are almost a parody of a Heinleinian troupe:
The rest of the codes were the problem. Stacey and Tom were the crypto geeks. Of course, calling Tom a geek was a stretch. Nearly two meters tall and a former Australian SAS commando, the "General Manager for Security and Emergency Response" for the Bank of the Americas might have a background in crypto and enjoy the occasional alternative clubbing night. Geek was still a stretch.
Steve Smith, Tom's brother, is also a 6'1" ex-commando badass, but when I said he is our fearless protag, I kind of lied, because the real protagonist of the novel is Steve's thirteen-year-old daughter, Faith. (Yes, her name is Faith, and yes, someone in the book actually asks Steve if she was named after the Buffy character. She wasn't.)
See that cover up there? The busty, heavily-armed blonde chick? Yeah, she's thirteen.
"Hooch, you’re a Marine," Faith said, tightening the strap on her helmet. She was wearing what had become her standard "extreme zombie fighting" kit. Tactical boots and tacticals. Firefighting bunker gear. Nomex head cover tucked under the collar of the bunker gear. Full face respirator. Helmet with integrated visor. Body armor with integral MOLLE. Knee, elbow and shin guards. Nitrile gloves. Tactical gloves. Rubber gloves. Assault pack with hydration unit. Saiga shotgun on friction strap rig. A .45 USP in tactical fast-draw holster. Two .45 USP in chest holsters. Fourteen Saiga ten-round 12-gauge magazines plus one in the weapon. Nine pistol magazines in holster plus three in weapons. Kukri in waist sheath. Machete in over-shoulder sheath, right. Halligan tool in over-shoulder sheath, left. Tactical knife in chest sheath. Tactical knife in waist sheath. Bowie knife in thigh sheath. Calf tactical knife times two. A few clasp knives dangling in various places.
The plot of the book is basically: zombie virus ends civilization, the Smiths go rescue survivors trapped aboard various ships at sea, accumulating the rag-tag fleet which they will lead in the next book. There is more zombie-hacking action than in a first-person shooter, most of it done by Faith. At one point she is mobbed by zombies, repeatedly dragged down, and keeps rising up like an Amazonian goddess.
Oh, by the way, Faith's fifteen-year-old sister Sophie is the smart one. She gets command of her own ship.
Under a Graveyard Sky is almost non-stop action. The action can get repetitive after a while, but Ringo is definitely appealing to the grognard gun-loving geek crowd, and one suspects he's trolling them a bit with his super-hot super-soldier jailbait heroine.
The writing is, well, very gonzo and cinematic (with many, many fannish in-jokes... Ringo references everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Schlock Mercenary to Dungeons & Dragons to establish his geek cred), and definitely not aimed at readers who appreciate artful prose, subtlety, or rich character development. But the cover kind of tells you that. I didn't mind the lack of style, but the increasingly rapid-fire one- and two-paragraph sections from random POVs, sometimes inserted only to get off another "Wow, Faith is awesome and too bad she's not legal yet" joke, did start to make this book read a bit like fan fiction. But entertaining fan fiction.
There seems to be something about survivalist novels that attracts conservative authors, and John Ringo is no exception. The hammer with which he bashes liberals is not as heavy as the one wielded by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle or "A. American", but he can't resist a few cracks about gun control.
Which, fair enough, if a zombie apocalypse happens, you will really wish you had guns.
I mean, that's why I have guns.
In case of TEOTWAWKI, I'm going to need something to read, right?
.... What? <..<
Poll Under a Graveyard Sky
Verdict: Under a Graveyard Sky is not high literature, it's an author gleefully catching the zombie wave, with shameless service for fans of zombie apocalypses, AD&D, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, guns, and underage girlsStrong Female Protagonists. The authorial soapboxing is relatively mild, the prose is readable if not exactly award-winning, and while it hasn't elevated my opinion of John Ringo, I'll probably read the next book, if only to see just how much more incredible his Kukri-wielding thirteen-year-old Amazon becomes.
My complete list of book reviews.
Baen, 2013, 367 pages
Zombies are real. And we made them. Are you prepared for the zombie apocalypse? The Smith family is, with the help of a few marines.
When an airborne "zombie" plague is released, bringing civilization to a grinding halt, the Smith family, Steven, Stacey, Sophia and Faith, take to the Atlantic to avoid the chaos. The plan is to find a safe haven from the anarchy of infected humanity. What they discover, instead, is a sea composed of the tears of survivors and a passion for bringing hope.
For it is up to the Smiths and a small band of Marines to somehow create the refuge that survivors seek in a world of darkness and terror. Now with every continent a holocaust and every ship an abattoir, life is lived under a graveyard sky.
John Ringo's books have never particularly appealed to me, so my only knowledge of his writing until now was the infamous Oh John Ringo no, which made me think his books might be entertaining in an OMG!Awful kind of way if I was in the mood for something one level of skeeviness up from Slave Girl of Gor.
Then this new series came out. Zombie apocalypse? Okay, I have to admit, zombie apocalypses are like brain candy to me, like a red-headed stepchild of space opera, another genre I love even though it's so often so very stupid. And the main characters are crazy prepper gun-nuts who are actually ready for a zombie apocalypse. Since I've also been reading a bunch of survivalist novels lately, I figured "Okay, sure, let's give it a go."
Under a Graveyard Sky does not waste any time getting to the action. In chapter one, our fearless protag gets a cryptic message from his brother using a prearranged code that tells him to grab the wife and kids and bug out. (The homage to Alas, Babylon is explicitly mentioned.) Their doomsday plan is to get on a yacht and head out to sea, where they will wait out whatever the apocalypse might be.
The Smiths are almost a parody of a Heinleinian troupe:
The rest of the codes were the problem. Stacey and Tom were the crypto geeks. Of course, calling Tom a geek was a stretch. Nearly two meters tall and a former Australian SAS commando, the "General Manager for Security and Emergency Response" for the Bank of the Americas might have a background in crypto and enjoy the occasional alternative clubbing night. Geek was still a stretch.
Steve Smith, Tom's brother, is also a 6'1" ex-commando badass, but when I said he is our fearless protag, I kind of lied, because the real protagonist of the novel is Steve's thirteen-year-old daughter, Faith. (Yes, her name is Faith, and yes, someone in the book actually asks Steve if she was named after the Buffy character. She wasn't.)
See that cover up there? The busty, heavily-armed blonde chick? Yeah, she's thirteen.
"Hooch, you’re a Marine," Faith said, tightening the strap on her helmet. She was wearing what had become her standard "extreme zombie fighting" kit. Tactical boots and tacticals. Firefighting bunker gear. Nomex head cover tucked under the collar of the bunker gear. Full face respirator. Helmet with integrated visor. Body armor with integral MOLLE. Knee, elbow and shin guards. Nitrile gloves. Tactical gloves. Rubber gloves. Assault pack with hydration unit. Saiga shotgun on friction strap rig. A .45 USP in tactical fast-draw holster. Two .45 USP in chest holsters. Fourteen Saiga ten-round 12-gauge magazines plus one in the weapon. Nine pistol magazines in holster plus three in weapons. Kukri in waist sheath. Machete in over-shoulder sheath, right. Halligan tool in over-shoulder sheath, left. Tactical knife in chest sheath. Tactical knife in waist sheath. Bowie knife in thigh sheath. Calf tactical knife times two. A few clasp knives dangling in various places.
The plot of the book is basically: zombie virus ends civilization, the Smiths go rescue survivors trapped aboard various ships at sea, accumulating the rag-tag fleet which they will lead in the next book. There is more zombie-hacking action than in a first-person shooter, most of it done by Faith. At one point she is mobbed by zombies, repeatedly dragged down, and keeps rising up like an Amazonian goddess.
Oh, by the way, Faith's fifteen-year-old sister Sophie is the smart one. She gets command of her own ship.
Under a Graveyard Sky is almost non-stop action. The action can get repetitive after a while, but Ringo is definitely appealing to the grognard gun-loving geek crowd, and one suspects he's trolling them a bit with his super-hot super-soldier jailbait heroine.
The writing is, well, very gonzo and cinematic (with many, many fannish in-jokes... Ringo references everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Schlock Mercenary to Dungeons & Dragons to establish his geek cred), and definitely not aimed at readers who appreciate artful prose, subtlety, or rich character development. But the cover kind of tells you that. I didn't mind the lack of style, but the increasingly rapid-fire one- and two-paragraph sections from random POVs, sometimes inserted only to get off another "Wow, Faith is awesome and too bad she's not legal yet" joke, did start to make this book read a bit like fan fiction. But entertaining fan fiction.
There seems to be something about survivalist novels that attracts conservative authors, and John Ringo is no exception. The hammer with which he bashes liberals is not as heavy as the one wielded by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle or "A. American", but he can't resist a few cracks about gun control.
Which, fair enough, if a zombie apocalypse happens, you will really wish you had guns.
I mean, that's why I have guns.
In case of TEOTWAWKI, I'm going to need something to read, right?
.... What? <..<
Poll Under a Graveyard Sky
Verdict: Under a Graveyard Sky is not high literature, it's an author gleefully catching the zombie wave, with shameless service for fans of zombie apocalypses, AD&D, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, guns, and underage girlsStrong Female Protagonists. The authorial soapboxing is relatively mild, the prose is readable if not exactly award-winning, and while it hasn't elevated my opinion of John Ringo, I'll probably read the next book, if only to see just how much more incredible his Kukri-wielding thirteen-year-old Amazon becomes.
My complete list of book reviews.