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119 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 25, 2019
The Fifth Survivor: Episode 1 is my first exposure to the gamelit genre. This is exciting new territory as a reader. Ramon does an excellent job formatting the narrative to showcase different text elements found in games. Details relevant to the reader (or player) such as leveling up skills are displayed in bold. Interactive written elements such as notes, letters, and journal entries are featured in italics and I appreciated that some, while not relevant to the main story, added texture and richness to the world.
The present verb tense took a little bit to get used to but captured the action and agency of playing a game. I am intrigued by the idea that Ramon could explore writing a second person point of view novel in his zombie world to give the reader even more agency.
Ramon is skilled at writing action sequences however he oftentimes failed to provide physical descriptions of the area the action was taking place beyond some structural damage or the type of room it was. Objects in the room were not described until they were interacted with, which caused me to reread sections to make sure I knew what room I was in.
For the most part, Ramon does a good job of showing instead of telling. There were two instances during dialogue that instead of continuing the dialogue and providing world building and details in the responses characters gave, Ramon chose to summarize in exposition. I felt that the interview would have been helpful to see the types of questions George asks and look at the way Anthony Clark answered them.
There is some room for improvement as there were some issues with continuity. There was a contradiction with the oversized tank zombie. In some scenes you could hear or feel the vibrations of his footsteps, his imposing size and demeanor kept him from moving quietly. But in other scenes he would pop out of nowhere, completely silent. The release of the experiment occurred on that day at the hospital and within a few hours George finds patients who have flatlined due to lack of care and expired food and flat soda in a break room. Those are things that would have taken more time to occur.
The novel would have been stronger with some research outside of video games. Announcements made in the novel were long and provided unnecessary details, and the announcement made at the hospital began with calling a Code Red. Code Red is standard in US hospitals for fire. Along the lines of fire, the hospital was not designed for fire code as doors that exited into stairwells and emergency exits were locked preventing exit (which was irksome given the long announcement ordered everyone to evacuate through the nearest emergency exit). Basic crime scene protocol knowledge would have improved George’s interaction with police. He was able to walk away without being required to provide any information while being possibly the last person to see a murder victim alive. George also unjams his magnum revolver by slamming it against the wall or floor which isn't an effective way to fix a jam on a gun, let alone a gun that rarely jams. These incidents of needing more world knowledge didn’t affect the flow of the narrative too much, just brief hiccups where I was reminded that’s not how it works.
The first half of the book is very quick to get into the action. George is very much a do-things-by-the-seat-of-his-pants character and he keeps the plot moving forward. By the second half of the novel I began to notice frequent typos and redundant words and phrases. It was as if editors and proofreaders had started editing the novel and stopped finding errors once they got pulled into the story.
If you can excuse some grammatical issues, the novel will pull you in with Ramon’s command of action and fighting. George is a believable and quirky character and his objectives are compelling. Gamelit is an exciting genre to read and experience. Ramon has the story crafting and potential to be next greatest zombie craze.