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ZA #2
ZA: And the Dead Shall Rise
Tracey Hedgewood has planned for years with other ZA survivalists what to do in the very unlikely instance of the dead walking. He is the man with a plan now that the ZA has become a frightening reality of the world. Guy Thibaudeau has managed to survive the first week of the ZA through sheer luck and knows that he needs a plan, and soon, if he wants to stay off the zombie menu. Tracey and Guy meet while both foraging in the same store for supplies. Casual and flirty acquaintances for six months before the dead rose to snack on the living, they decide to team up to increase their survival chances as well as see where the strong mutual attraction will lead.
As the men make their way to what they hope is safety following The Plan Tracey has been refining for years, Tracey’s every-man-for-himself Plan slowly morphs into a scheme to make their safe haven on the Toronto Islands a zombie-free zone for themselves as well as the people still living there. While guiding their new group into making their location safe for everyone, the men explore their mutual desires and kinks, finding that they not only work well as a zombie killing team but as lovers, too. Tracey and Guy soon discover that even in the horror of the dead hunting the living, incredible good can come from a hopelessly bad situation.
As the men make their way to what they hope is safety following The Plan Tracey has been refining for years, Tracey’s every-man-for-himself Plan slowly morphs into a scheme to make their safe haven on the Toronto Islands a zombie-free zone for themselves as well as the people still living there. While guiding their new group into making their location safe for everyone, the men explore their mutual desires and kinks, finding that they not only work well as a zombie killing team but as lovers, too. Tracey and Guy soon discover that even in the horror of the dead hunting the living, incredible good can come from a hopelessly bad situation.
326 pages, ebook
First published November 18, 2014
27 people want to read
About the author
I.D. Locke
16 books115 followersFree-read stories on Ao3:
https://archiveofourown.org/users/ID_...
Free-read stories are posted to my author journal: http://id-locke.dreamwidth.org/
Personal site and fan fiction are at http://2metaldog.livejournal.com/
https://archiveofourown.org/users/ID_...
Free-read stories are posted to my author journal: http://id-locke.dreamwidth.org/
Personal site and fan fiction are at http://2metaldog.livejournal.com/
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 13, 2015
I love a good apocalypse story and zombies can add a great humorous element. I haven’t read any other books in this series but I really struggled with this one. Some of time the story would be entertaining and pages would fly by but then I’d get annoyed by the same issues and I’d not read for several days. It’s not a bad book, it’s just too coincidental and repetitive. I read somewhere a coincidence that lands the characters in a problem is good but a coincidence that gets them out of the problem is lazy. I feel as if that quote typifies exactly what went wrong with ZA: And the Dead Shall Rise, there are so many lazy coincidences that keep life extremely easy for the main characters.
Guy’s day job is being a trainer at a local gym while he gets ready for his third appearance at the Olympics. He’s a crack shot and biathlon athlete in both the summer and winter games when the zombie apocalypse (always called the ZA) comes to his hometown of Toronto. In the following chaos he learns his parents are dead or zombies and he knows he has to leave town. On a trip to the local sporting goods store he encounters the manager, Tracey, and the two decide to team up together. Tracey has been planning for the ZA for years and has all the knowledge he needs to survive. With Guy’s amazing shooting skill, the two are a formidable team. Their decision is helped by the fact they both have been wanting to ask the other out for months and can’t keep their hands to themselves when they figure this out. Together they head out to find a safe place to survive and perhaps thrive.
The book has all the basics of an involved and lengthy story. There’s the immediate aftermath of the ZA, the two men meeting then running away together (literally), finding other survivors, a plan for the future and then the first steps towards building a new kind of life and community while Guy and Tracey fall in love. Unfortunately the basics are simply that – steps taken to get to the next plot point with so many coincidences thrown in to make it easy on everyone. First Tracey has been planning for the apocalypse for years, which isn’t that unusual or abnormal but his level of preparation is ridiculous. Honestly, truly ridiculous. He has lists of all the houses, boats, restaurants including floor plans they could ever possibly need and the amount of upkeep that must be done to ensure that list was always current was mind boggling. Frankly anytime the characters needed something, Tracey or Guy would just happen to have that knowledge and/or be an expert at it. Some useful skills would be nice but literally there is nothing these two can’t do or accomplish with ease. Which leaves them to have tons of kinky sex in the meantime.
Now I’ve no problem with characters getting it on during an apocalypse of any kind. However I found it a bit hard to believe that these two would indulge in their serious kinks immediately while still on the run from zombies. They have lengthy conversations about what gets each other off with zombies rattling at the doors. I didn’t get the impression this was for comedic effect either. In addition to the rampant and pretty kinky sex life they indulge in immediately and often, the two have a bizarre relationship. They seem to require the same steps as a relationship prior to the collapse of civilization down to the conversation about when to stop using condoms. Because using condoms between men who don’t fear disease is a logical decision during the end of life as they know it… why? They have to declare their love for each other before they’ll stop using condoms and again I was kind of stumped at this progression. Sure it’d be nice to spend the rest of a fucked up life with someone you love but come on…this is nearly “any port in a storm” crisis. There are literally no other options for these two so I think the dithering about whether they love each other and want to stay together just doesn’t work in the immediate aftermath of a worldwide apocalypse.
Additionally I found Guy’s dialogue affected and stale. The inclusion of random French words didn’t give the speech a French feel but rather keeps the words stilted and awkward. It felt like a put on and kept reminding me I was reading a book that wanted to have a certain feel but never really achieved it. I found the pages turned fast due to the formatting so sometimes that alone would keep my momentum going to read more and be done with the book. I liked the characters decently enough I just got frustrated with the overly easy solutions and unnecessary relationship tangents. Sometimes the scenes would really hit good notes such as the sex/shooting scene on the boat between Tracey and Guy with their bet. That was a hot and entertaining scene as was the addition of cop and Tracey’s best friends.
Overall the book was ok but I found myself wishing it was over before I hit the halfway point. Too many coincidences and easy outs combined with a truly odd relationship progression, given the situation, and this didn’t really work for me at all. I’m debating reading Konrad and Jase’s story as I liked them as characters better but no doubt they’ll have amazing and perfect survival skills too.
Guy’s day job is being a trainer at a local gym while he gets ready for his third appearance at the Olympics. He’s a crack shot and biathlon athlete in both the summer and winter games when the zombie apocalypse (always called the ZA) comes to his hometown of Toronto. In the following chaos he learns his parents are dead or zombies and he knows he has to leave town. On a trip to the local sporting goods store he encounters the manager, Tracey, and the two decide to team up together. Tracey has been planning for the ZA for years and has all the knowledge he needs to survive. With Guy’s amazing shooting skill, the two are a formidable team. Their decision is helped by the fact they both have been wanting to ask the other out for months and can’t keep their hands to themselves when they figure this out. Together they head out to find a safe place to survive and perhaps thrive.
The book has all the basics of an involved and lengthy story. There’s the immediate aftermath of the ZA, the two men meeting then running away together (literally), finding other survivors, a plan for the future and then the first steps towards building a new kind of life and community while Guy and Tracey fall in love. Unfortunately the basics are simply that – steps taken to get to the next plot point with so many coincidences thrown in to make it easy on everyone. First Tracey has been planning for the apocalypse for years, which isn’t that unusual or abnormal but his level of preparation is ridiculous. Honestly, truly ridiculous. He has lists of all the houses, boats, restaurants including floor plans they could ever possibly need and the amount of upkeep that must be done to ensure that list was always current was mind boggling. Frankly anytime the characters needed something, Tracey or Guy would just happen to have that knowledge and/or be an expert at it. Some useful skills would be nice but literally there is nothing these two can’t do or accomplish with ease. Which leaves them to have tons of kinky sex in the meantime.
Now I’ve no problem with characters getting it on during an apocalypse of any kind. However I found it a bit hard to believe that these two would indulge in their serious kinks immediately while still on the run from zombies. They have lengthy conversations about what gets each other off with zombies rattling at the doors. I didn’t get the impression this was for comedic effect either. In addition to the rampant and pretty kinky sex life they indulge in immediately and often, the two have a bizarre relationship. They seem to require the same steps as a relationship prior to the collapse of civilization down to the conversation about when to stop using condoms. Because using condoms between men who don’t fear disease is a logical decision during the end of life as they know it… why? They have to declare their love for each other before they’ll stop using condoms and again I was kind of stumped at this progression. Sure it’d be nice to spend the rest of a fucked up life with someone you love but come on…this is nearly “any port in a storm” crisis. There are literally no other options for these two so I think the dithering about whether they love each other and want to stay together just doesn’t work in the immediate aftermath of a worldwide apocalypse.
Additionally I found Guy’s dialogue affected and stale. The inclusion of random French words didn’t give the speech a French feel but rather keeps the words stilted and awkward. It felt like a put on and kept reminding me I was reading a book that wanted to have a certain feel but never really achieved it. I found the pages turned fast due to the formatting so sometimes that alone would keep my momentum going to read more and be done with the book. I liked the characters decently enough I just got frustrated with the overly easy solutions and unnecessary relationship tangents. Sometimes the scenes would really hit good notes such as the sex/shooting scene on the boat between Tracey and Guy with their bet. That was a hot and entertaining scene as was the addition of cop and Tracey’s best friends.
Overall the book was ok but I found myself wishing it was over before I hit the halfway point. Too many coincidences and easy outs combined with a truly odd relationship progression, given the situation, and this didn’t really work for me at all. I’m debating reading Konrad and Jase’s story as I liked them as characters better but no doubt they’ll have amazing and perfect survival skills too.
January 1, 2016
First time author for me and I thought it was a great and entertaining read: I am partial to zombies and m/m romance= a hot combination. I like the two MC’s: Tracey (the geek) and Guy (hot) and how they dealt with the meltdown of society to ZOMBIES. Tracey is a survivalist and his knowledge: “help save the day”. A little bit of kink between the two MC’s along with ZOMBIES; what more can be had? Now with all Zombies book I have read in the past; the world has gone to heck in hand basket at the start and the MC’s have to survive in the “new” world with the Zombies; this book no exception. Starts off with a bang and keeps going. My very first read in M/M genre with ZOMBIES. It is a very entertaining read. I would recommend it to someone who might be interested in the “zombie” genre with m/m romance.
July 29, 2017
3.75 Stars
I was in the mood for zombies and this book came out just in time! It's set in the same universe as ZA: Run & Gun, which I really liked, and it's set in my home town, which is an added bonus because I so enjoy reading about familiar places.
This book revolves around Tracey Hedgewood and Guy Thibaudeau and while I enjoyed their blossoming relationship and their exploration of kink, it didn't touch me in the same way that Jase and Konrad did in the first book.
Would I read more in this universe? You betcha!
28/Jul/2017
On re-read, I'll bump this up to a full 4 Stars.
Really wish Ms. Locke would continue this series!
I was in the mood for zombies and this book came out just in time! It's set in the same universe as ZA: Run & Gun, which I really liked, and it's set in my home town, which is an added bonus because I so enjoy reading about familiar places.
This book revolves around Tracey Hedgewood and Guy Thibaudeau and while I enjoyed their blossoming relationship and their exploration of kink, it didn't touch me in the same way that Jase and Konrad did in the first book.
Would I read more in this universe? You betcha!
28/Jul/2017
On re-read, I'll bump this up to a full 4 Stars.
Really wish Ms. Locke would continue this series!
May 13, 2015
3.5 stars
This was a good series, I enjoyed all three of the stories.
This was a good series, I enjoyed all three of the stories.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews