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Day by Day Armageddon Paperback – January 1, 2004
- Print length260 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherLulu.Com
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 2004
- Dimensions6.25 x 0.75 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-101411608313
- ISBN-13978-1411608313
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Product details
- Publisher : Lulu.Com; Pristine Condition Like New edition (January 1, 2004)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 260 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1411608313
- ISBN-13 : 978-1411608313
- Item Weight : 13.7 ounces
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 0.75 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #9,040,438 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #22,761 in Ghost Fiction
- #35,827 in Military Science Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
First, I brought you the cult classic, Day by Day Armageddon, where we both journeyed alongside the unnamed survivor as he trekked across the bleak landscapes occupied by the undead.
Some time after the Great Recession, I aimed to accurately depict the bedlam of a post-grid down United States in Tomorrow War, an alternate timeline where a jack boot on the throat of humanity is only one black swan event away.
Now, in the pages of Trilobyte, I bring you a world in which the machines rule and humankind is pushed to the brink of total annihilation. Some might call it a warning of what is to come if we aren’t careful with technology.
They are closer than you think.
They will be trillions.
They will come for you.
Lock your doors and load those rail guns. The machines are here.
J.L. Bourne is a retired military officer & bestselling author of Day by Day Armageddon, Tomorrow War, and Trilobyte. Get your copies on Amazon today, before the grid goes dark.
http://JLBourne.com
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I prefer the zombies I grew up with: slow, shambling and not too smart. No matter how entertaining or well-written, I don't really want anything that differs too much from the traditional "rules" laid down by Romero in NotLD. A few fun little twists are okay, but when you start radically changing the zombies just to be different or "extreme," you change the entire nature of the threat and start messing with your reader's expectations... Chances are they bought the book because they are a zombie movie fan and they expect your novel to play by the rules; if not by the "classic" Romero rules, then by the "new" rules set forth in 28 Days Later or the Dawn of the Dead remake.
Just when I'd given up hope of ever finding such a novel, I stumbled across Day By Day Armageddon by J.L. Bourne. Finally, an author who delivered just plain old-fashioned Romero zombies! I will note that there are some fast zombies later in the book but these are well-explained and used sparingly. Far from being distracting, these fast zombies actually add to the horror. Kudos to the author for satisfying fans of both fast and traditional zombies--not an easy thing to do!
The story, told in first person journal format, kicks off with the narrator (an unnamed U.S. Naval officer) making a New Year's resolution to keep a journal. As the days progress, he comments on his life and various problems he's noticing in the news, particularly about a mysterious disease outbreak in China...
Naturally, the "disease" is the zombie virus, and it quickly spreads around the globe, cutting him off from the outside world. The hero is torn between joining his fellow officers on-base or remaining barricaded in his home, but opts for the latter. In the time he has left before everything breaks down, he improves his home's defenses (adding broken glass to the top of his walls, buying more ammo for his gun collection, adding do-it-yourself bars to his ground floor windows, etc.).
He is determined to "wait out" the plague, but the government fails to contain the epidemic, retreating to hidden bunkers, and leaving the panic-stricken civilian population to fend for themselves. The narrator teams up with his only surviving neighbor, an engineer named John and his dog, who is good at alerting them to the presence of zombies (a little too good, as they have to keep her quiet most of the time to prevent her barking from alerting the undead to their presence).
The growing number of zombies outside forces them to decide to get out of the small Texas town (near Austin) where they were holed up. Along the way, they encounter some other survivors, rampaging paramilitary, hordes of undead, and a variety of other realistic hazards that one would expect to find in a post-apocalyptic world.
One of the key features that makes Day By Day Armageddon so interesting as a tale of post-apocalyptic/zombie survival horror is the narrator's unique perspective as a U.S. Naval Officer (the author is also one, currently serving in Iraq). There is a fair amount of military slang and abbreviations that take a little getting used to, but they add flavor to the book. The attention to detail, from the careful descriptions of weapons to the realistic way that surviving the crisis is presented, makes this book stand out from other zombie novels, which tend to gloss over or ignore such things.
Initially, I was a little leery of purchasing this book I'd never heard of, despite all the glowing reviews here (only one negative out of over 45!), so I checked out the author's website and found he had the first 78 pages online to read FREE. I promptly did so and loved it. There were no more reservations; I had to order this book!
I got it in the mail today; it's a quick, exciting read. I finished it in about three hours (starting at page 78--where the free online sample ended--probably shaved an hour or two off, but I'm a fast reader). I thought the book was fantastic, easily one of the best pieces of zombie fiction ever produced and I eagerly await the sequel as well as the promised novel, Dead Land, set in the same universe as Day by Day Armageddon.
My one gripe about the story is I would have liked to see a bit more depth to round out the supporting cast, but I suppose that can't be helped considering the first person journal format it is written in.
There is an exciting cliffhanger ending. I should warn you... there is no resolution! It only bothers me in that we have no idea when we will see a Part 2. It would have been better, from a marketing standpoint, to capitalize on the success of Part 1 by having Part 2 ready to go within a year at most of this book's release so you could strike while the iron was hot, rather than waiting years...
The number of typos increased a bit more than I would have liked from about page 120 on, particularly chronically misusing "site" for "sight" and "wondered" instead of "wandered". It seemed like there was either a misused word or a punctuation error every few pages (but still not as bad as a lot of other self-published works). I'm not sure if these were prevalent prior to page 78, as I had already read the online version and skipped them in the hardcopy, but I don't recall there being very many. There certainly didn't seem to be too many between pages 78-120 (approximate page spread). These typos are a little more forgivable given that this is supposed to be a journal written on the run by a lone survivor.
Besides the very poor cover illustration, there are a few images included in the book. I could not fully utilize the map of "Known Nuclear Zones" or "Hotel 23" (the military base they flee to) because the maps were so small and pixellated. The scattered few photos were cheesy and distracting, and the photoshop filter used to "enhance" some of them didn't help.
Despite these minor issues, I highly recommend this book to all zombie and horror fans. What you are ultimately buying the book for is the story and the author delivers that in spades!!!
The book begins with one man on on military leave (the reader never gets to learn his name, which makes sense since it's his own journal) and writing how the world is going to hell one day at a time. This hell begins with reports on the news of plague in China and escalates to undead walking outside his very home. The "author" describes each day how he takes measures to avoid detection, contact other survivors, find food, find transportation and everything else to stay alive. And even though this type of writing doesn't allow for a lot of character build-up, I became emotionally involved with the main character and the other survivors he meets.
Being a military man, you could call the main POV a bit convenient, as there were few skills he didn't have that helped him in his tasks. One thought I had as I was reading the book was what it might be like from the perspective of someone less experienced in arms and survival (someone like myself perhaps?) Perhaps it would be a bit more terrifying, but in this book, probably a lot shorter as well. The undead world here is harsh and realistic. Lack of food, water and shelter are as big of enemies as the undead themselves. It's the human experience of it that makes the book so addicting. While I love a good zombie story, the subject matter could have been any number of things and this format of human survival would've been just as intense and addicing.
Don't let this deter zombie fans however. Although the word zombie isn't used in the book, it IS a zombie book and as far as zombie fiction goes, this is probably my favorite. If the movies were made like this the genre would be much more entertaining. Why only four stars? It's not a full book. It ends is a pretty reasonable cliffhanger and I'll have to aquire the second book (as yet unreleased) to figure out what happens. I don't mind this so much, but that's the only thing keeping "Day by Day Armageddon" from 5 stars.
In any case, if you're a fan of Max Brooks or of zombies in general, treat yourself to this book.
Top reviews from other countries
Das ganze liest sich sehr sehr schnell weg (mein erstes englisches Buch seit langem!) und man wird förmlich in die Handlung hineingesogen. Durch den Tagebuchstil wird in meinen Augen eine extreme Spannung aufgebaut, sodass ich das Buch teilweise gar nicht mehr weglegen konnte. Die Story ist für mich stimmig, da ist (außer dem Genre ansich) nichts über Gebühr unrealistisch oder nicht genauso vorstellbar, wie es im Buch beschrieben wird. Das Buch wurde ja von einem (ehemaligen?) Soldaten geschrieben und das markt man dem Buch auch an: Der "Held" der Geschichte plant sein Überleben durch und handelt nicht wie ein weinerlicher Harry Potter. Alles in allem sind alle Figuren (außer den Zombies natürlich ^^) durchaus sympathisch gezeichnet, sodass man sich schnell mit ihnen identifiziert und mitfiebert.
Der ganze Schreibstil ist für mich etwas vollkommen neues gewesen und hebt dieses Buch wohl von anderen ab. Man kann es gut in Etappen lesen, wenn man es denn schafft nicht wissen zu wollen was als nächstes passiert ist, denn das Buch lässt einem quasi keine Atempause.
Fazit: Englisch verbessert, Buch genossen!
PS: es gibt wohl demnächst einen zweiten Teil, der die Handlung aus diesem Buch fortsetzt. Ich kann es kaum aushalten!
The tale starts out with the epidemic first impacting on the world, as humanity quickly begins to crumble around the writer. With massive similarities at the start, to that of the cult online diary ‘Alpha_dog’, we see the panic and uncertainty of the situation slowly taking over. From the start, the reader finds out that the diary is being written by a lone military man who falls upon his training and knowledge to ensure his own survival. Soon we meet a few other survivors, as the diary takes the reader on a desperate trip from one location to another.
The small band of survivors end up hiding away, only to find that they have to defend themselves against more than just the decaying hordes of the undead. Drawing heavily from the ideas from within George A. Romero’s cult classic film ‘Dawn Of The Dead’, Bourne ends this first volume with a dramatic turn of events for the survivors. Unfortunetly, the ending does seem to come about all too quickly, but this leaves open the start of the next instalment perfectly.
Bourne opening admits that he is no ‘real’ writer, but his obvious passion for the subject brings out a flare of energy that is often clouded in other similar work. The novel is no masterpiece, but one hell of an adventure into the dangerous and uncertain post-apocalyptic world of the undead.
Like in David Moody’s fantastic ‘Autumn’ series, ‘Day by Day Armageddon’ turns more towards the harrowing mental stress of the survivors, rather than the simple blood & guts angle that could easily be followed with a zombie novel. The writing quickly submerges the reader into this sudden decaying world of our main survivor, allowing you to feel that you are also part of the events that take place within the unfolding tale.
This first volume ends with such a dramatic turn of events that you will be crying out for the release of the next volume. At the end of the book, you are treated to a seven page preview of Bourne’s next written project entitled “Dead Land” which looks to be written from a third person viewpoint.
The book runs for a total of 258 pages (including the “Dead Land” preview) and was published off the authors own back.