What do you think?
Rate this book
Meadowside
“Dawn of the Dead meets Benefits Street” — Nathan Robinson (author of Starers)
Nobody knows where they have come from. The police are powerless to stop them. Everyone trapped inside the Meadowside shopping centre is on their own, with no hope of rescue. With the whole of Yorkshire under attack, they are the lucky ones.
Kylie and her friends from the council estate are shoplifting in Sportswear Direct when Meadowside is invaded by thousands of crazed killers with a taste for human flesh. Fighting to survive, she must choose who is most likely to be able to save her — an off duty policewoman, an aging skinhead in his sixties, or a psychotic football hooligan with a chainsaw.
Marcus Blakeston takes his usual mix of characters from the underclass and stirs them into a near-future post-apocalyptic setting. Not for the faint hearted or easily offended, Meadowside contains graphic violence and swearing throughout.
Nobody knows where they have come from. The police are powerless to stop them. Everyone trapped inside the Meadowside shopping centre is on their own, with no hope of rescue. With the whole of Yorkshire under attack, they are the lucky ones.
Kylie and her friends from the council estate are shoplifting in Sportswear Direct when Meadowside is invaded by thousands of crazed killers with a taste for human flesh. Fighting to survive, she must choose who is most likely to be able to save her — an off duty policewoman, an aging skinhead in his sixties, or a psychotic football hooligan with a chainsaw.
Marcus Blakeston takes his usual mix of characters from the underclass and stirs them into a near-future post-apocalyptic setting. Not for the faint hearted or easily offended, Meadowside contains graphic violence and swearing throughout.
112 pages, Paperback
First published March 26, 2014
2 people are currently reading
92 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 6, 2014
good little zombie novel, pretty short.... lot of gore....lot of violence....very British......not bad.
May 15, 2014
I’m a big fan of zombies. Well, not zombies themselves, they scare me and I don’t think I’d like to meet one, but I love a good scary zombie book or film. I entered the Goodreads giveaway for Meadowside because the idea of Dawn of the Dead with a chav twist appealed to me. I was excited to win and when the book arrived I couldn’t wait to get stuck in.
Meadowside is a self-published novella by author Marcus Blakestone. The front cover art is great – a huge, sinister eye in creepy red tones. The blurb on the back cover is, unfortunately, quite difficult to read due to the choice of font and colour.
It’s only a short book, and I read it in one afternoon. It’s fast paced and packed with action scenes and gore. The basic plot is simple – Meadowside shopping centre is overrun with zombie-like ‘crazies’, and we follow the storylines of several people trapped inside the shopping centre as they fight for their lives.
If you’re looking for a creepy atmosphere, something to send chills up your spine, this isn’t the book for you. There wasn’t much scene setting and I found the characters were not developed enough for me to care enough what happened to them. The lack of explanation (or even theories) for the cause of the zombies may have been an attempt to enhance the feeling of claustrophobia, but it didn’t work for me. If, on the other hand, you like almost constant action, violence and gore, this one may push your buttons. The story was good – a new chav twist on an old classic idea – and the action scenes plentiful.
The author uses a lot of stereotypes (a group of shoplifting teenagers, a group of football hooligans), which are clichéd but realistic. If the book had been longer, the characters could have been developed further and I may have cared whether they lived or were mauled by ‘crazies’, but as I already found them quite unlikeable, spending more than 111 pages with them may have been a struggle.
The book would have benefitted from a good editor and proofreader. There were some basic errors, such as capital letters where there shouldn’t have been, a lack of capitalisation where there should have been and the incorrect use of affect/effect. The author has some pet words and phrases that were overused throughout the book (cherry red Doc Martens, arterial blood) and in one 5-page section ‘the youth(s)’ was written an incredible and tiresome 39 times.
The worst, the thing that actually made me put down the book and wonder how it had managed to get into print without a beta reader, editor or proofreader spotting it (and making me wonder if the story had been through any of those people at all) was on page 91.
‘Sally felt her chest tighten, a few drops of urine leaking from her vagina.’
Sally needs medical attention. Urine does not come from a woman’s vagina. If it does, something is wrong. If that had been written earlier in the book, I’m sure I would have stopped reading.
Unfortunately, I can’t give this book a good rating. It’s a rushed gore-fest, but I didn’t feel engaged with the characters and there wasn’t a great deal of plot besides getting away from the ‘crazies’ or beating them up with golf clubs and chainsaws.
Meadowside is a self-published novella by author Marcus Blakestone. The front cover art is great – a huge, sinister eye in creepy red tones. The blurb on the back cover is, unfortunately, quite difficult to read due to the choice of font and colour.
It’s only a short book, and I read it in one afternoon. It’s fast paced and packed with action scenes and gore. The basic plot is simple – Meadowside shopping centre is overrun with zombie-like ‘crazies’, and we follow the storylines of several people trapped inside the shopping centre as they fight for their lives.
If you’re looking for a creepy atmosphere, something to send chills up your spine, this isn’t the book for you. There wasn’t much scene setting and I found the characters were not developed enough for me to care enough what happened to them. The lack of explanation (or even theories) for the cause of the zombies may have been an attempt to enhance the feeling of claustrophobia, but it didn’t work for me. If, on the other hand, you like almost constant action, violence and gore, this one may push your buttons. The story was good – a new chav twist on an old classic idea – and the action scenes plentiful.
The author uses a lot of stereotypes (a group of shoplifting teenagers, a group of football hooligans), which are clichéd but realistic. If the book had been longer, the characters could have been developed further and I may have cared whether they lived or were mauled by ‘crazies’, but as I already found them quite unlikeable, spending more than 111 pages with them may have been a struggle.
The book would have benefitted from a good editor and proofreader. There were some basic errors, such as capital letters where there shouldn’t have been, a lack of capitalisation where there should have been and the incorrect use of affect/effect. The author has some pet words and phrases that were overused throughout the book (cherry red Doc Martens, arterial blood) and in one 5-page section ‘the youth(s)’ was written an incredible and tiresome 39 times.
The worst, the thing that actually made me put down the book and wonder how it had managed to get into print without a beta reader, editor or proofreader spotting it (and making me wonder if the story had been through any of those people at all) was on page 91.
‘Sally felt her chest tighten, a few drops of urine leaking from her vagina.’
Sally needs medical attention. Urine does not come from a woman’s vagina. If it does, something is wrong. If that had been written earlier in the book, I’m sure I would have stopped reading.
Unfortunately, I can’t give this book a good rating. It’s a rushed gore-fest, but I didn’t feel engaged with the characters and there wasn’t a great deal of plot besides getting away from the ‘crazies’ or beating them up with golf clubs and chainsaws.
July 20, 2016
A zombie book with major description of gore and dismemberment. Action-packed throughout. The main characters (Kylie/Tom) were okay but could have been more descriptive on their backstories to make them stronger. Other characters were a little slow on the uptake on what was happening around them (hello common sense, save yourself). The details about the zombies ("crazies") did not fully explain exactly how they become infected other then the massacring of bodies. And lastly, strong language throughout the book could have been toned down some without having the repetition of some words. Overall a decent read for a zombie book.
April 27, 2014
I thoroughly enjoyed the romp of this story. There was little downtime during the whole story, non stop action. Would recommend to any zombie aficionado.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews