Grizzled war veteran turned game warden, Brayden James and a small group of survivors, fight their way through the rugged wilderness of southern Appalachia to an isolated cabin in the hope of finding sanctuary. Every terrifying step they make they are stalked by a growing mass of staggering corpses, and a raging forest fire, set by the government in hopes of containing the virus.
As all logical routes off the mountain are cut off from them, they seek the higher ground, but they soon realize there is little hope of escape when the dead walk and the world burns.
A writer of Appalachian-themed thriller and horror novels, Jason lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of the Carolina's with his wife and four children. He is an avid outdoorsman and enjoys the culture and the many fascinating stories that abound in the Appalachian region.
His stories are born while gazing at the stars by a campfire, listening to the gurgling water of the Chattooga River, hunting in the wilds of the Pisgah National Forest and his many lone camping trips in the Appalachian Mountains he calls home.
Back porch storytelling is a time-honored tradition in the Blue Ridge Mountains and he hopes to pass that tradition along to his readers…one horrifying tale at a time.
A very straight forward zombie novella that for the most part is reasonably well written, but which offers exactly nothing new or of note to seasoned consumers of the sub-genre. Dead Ascent does have, however, the good grace to be short and to the point, which means a swift pace is maintained through the book. The writing is also technically sound, and there was a pleasing lack of copy editing errors throughout Dead Ascent.
Now if only McPherson did not switch between POVs within single sections, wrote less clichéd female characters, and did not fall back on using the word "abominations" to describe the zombies three times a page, then this would have been a recommendation. As it stands, there are many better zombie reads out there.
2.5 Abominable Abominations Ambulating on Animated Appendages for Dead Ascent.
So you're sitting around a camp fire in the middle of the woods, somewhere on the side of a mountain, telling scary stories. Vengeful ghosts, psychopaths, rabid animals, . . . zombies??
Of course! The mountain terrain is the next landscape in zombie adventures. Author McPherson does a splendid job setting up the zombie outbreak in the wilderness. I particularly enjoyed the childbirth scene in the front seat of the car, as the zombies are approaching. Pure entertainment value there ... I mean, what self-respecting pregnant woman, 3 weeks from her due date, would want to go camping in the sticks? Apparently this one did, and good thing too, because little Harvey, if he survives to grow up, will have a great campfire tale for his friends. Kudos to the author!