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From Despair to Where
If you love thrillers, post-apocalyptic stories, characters you can embrace & fall in love with, villains who give you chills, and fast-paced rollercoaster stories, then you will love From Despair to Where.
What would you do if you locked yourself away for days on end, away from the media, friends, colleagues, and family; working on some menial task for work, only to go to the shop to buy milk and find out that people were eating people? Meet Jack.
What would you do if you were to watch the world turn on its head, trapped in your city centre apartment? How do you survive the growing numbers of flesh-eating monsters, metres down on the street? Meet Lucy.
From Despair to Where is a fast-paced thriller set at the start of a pandemic: a virus that turns the dead into animated corpses with an insatiable hunger. It chronicles the lives of Jack and Lucy in their quest to let go of the past and adapt to a new existence.
A journey to find a home is difficult when you’re surviving with only the skills acquired in the civilised world, throw in deranged and psychopathic survivors, and that passage becomes much more fraught. Jack and Lucy however, have little choice, they must find a place to call home to have any hope of surviving.
Loss. Fear. Hope.
From Despair to Where
The debut novel by Oliver Smith.
What would you do if you locked yourself away for days on end, away from the media, friends, colleagues, and family; working on some menial task for work, only to go to the shop to buy milk and find out that people were eating people? Meet Jack.
What would you do if you were to watch the world turn on its head, trapped in your city centre apartment? How do you survive the growing numbers of flesh-eating monsters, metres down on the street? Meet Lucy.
From Despair to Where is a fast-paced thriller set at the start of a pandemic: a virus that turns the dead into animated corpses with an insatiable hunger. It chronicles the lives of Jack and Lucy in their quest to let go of the past and adapt to a new existence.
A journey to find a home is difficult when you’re surviving with only the skills acquired in the civilised world, throw in deranged and psychopathic survivors, and that passage becomes much more fraught. Jack and Lucy however, have little choice, they must find a place to call home to have any hope of surviving.
Loss. Fear. Hope.
From Despair to Where
The debut novel by Oliver Smith.
411 pages, Paperback
First published April 23, 2020
2 people are currently reading
13 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 30, 2022
One of the better zombie apocalypse novels although I always prefer the likes of this when they are based in the UK, particularly when Jack and Lucy travel through parts of the country I am familiar with.
November 15, 2020
Jack works from home and pretty much cuts himself off from the world, so much so that he misses the initial news about a worldwide pandemic and the rising of the dead. When he is finally forced to face up to it, he meets others along the way and discovers the best and worst in humanity. Particularly Lucy, a woman with a strong survival instinct. They have both suffered great loss even before the pandemic and Lucy's attitude to life helps Jack find that even in this strange new world, he cares about life and love after all.
This book probably doesn't bring anything unexpected to the genre but if you enjoy zombie related fiction, it's worth a read.
This book probably doesn't bring anything unexpected to the genre but if you enjoy zombie related fiction, it's worth a read.
July 23, 2022
TLDR: don't bother reading this book.
I honestly don't know how to explain my disdain for this book, but here are some thoughts:
1) The endless social commentary became very tedious. We get it - you don't like reality TV stars. I typically don't mind social commentary if it's done in a partcular clever or poignant way, but this was painful to read and often shoehorned in unnecessarily.
2) The main male character Jack was very unlikeable. He came across as a misogynist with inadequacy issues and a need to be a White Knight. If this was used in a way where he grows and learns, it might have been acceptable, but instead he's a controlling, annoying, whiny character that amounts to absolutely nothing. He contributes nothing. Lucy deserved better.
3) The constant need for the main female character (Lucy) to praise the main male character (Jack) was absolutely exhausting.
4) The sex scenes. Awful.
5) There are typos everywhere (Chole instead of Chloe made me laugh), there are words left in sentences that should have been removed with editing, sometimes a character will talk to another but the wrong character replies (a mistake, not as a part of the dialogue). In one scene they describe a list of characters in each vehicle, then on the very next page they list them again. There is repeated use of words close together and futher repeating of information, like the author thinks the reader has forgotten. This happens very frequently and it's frustrating to read.
6) The book could have been around half the size with editing. It is far too long and contains so much pointless information.
7) I didn't understand the chapters containing random facts and figures about the world at the time (or yet more pointless social commentary). They completely remove the reader from the story and add nothing to it.
8) The villain's backstory made me eye roll. I think someone has been watching too many movies. Maybe Kill Bill? He also amounted to very little.
All in all, it felt like a very cliched zombie story (like the author had watched The Walking Dead, 28 Days Later and World War Z and mushed them into 400 pages), with unlikeable characters, terrible structure and a plot that doesn't truly go anywhere.
I honestly don't know how to explain my disdain for this book, but here are some thoughts:
1) The endless social commentary became very tedious. We get it - you don't like reality TV stars. I typically don't mind social commentary if it's done in a partcular clever or poignant way, but this was painful to read and often shoehorned in unnecessarily.
2) The main male character Jack was very unlikeable. He came across as a misogynist with inadequacy issues and a need to be a White Knight. If this was used in a way where he grows and learns, it might have been acceptable, but instead he's a controlling, annoying, whiny character that amounts to absolutely nothing. He contributes nothing. Lucy deserved better.
3) The constant need for the main female character (Lucy) to praise the main male character (Jack) was absolutely exhausting.
4) The sex scenes. Awful.
5) There are typos everywhere (Chole instead of Chloe made me laugh), there are words left in sentences that should have been removed with editing, sometimes a character will talk to another but the wrong character replies (a mistake, not as a part of the dialogue). In one scene they describe a list of characters in each vehicle, then on the very next page they list them again. There is repeated use of words close together and futher repeating of information, like the author thinks the reader has forgotten. This happens very frequently and it's frustrating to read.
6) The book could have been around half the size with editing. It is far too long and contains so much pointless information.
7) I didn't understand the chapters containing random facts and figures about the world at the time (or yet more pointless social commentary). They completely remove the reader from the story and add nothing to it.
8) The villain's backstory made me eye roll. I think someone has been watching too many movies. Maybe Kill Bill? He also amounted to very little.
All in all, it felt like a very cliched zombie story (like the author had watched The Walking Dead, 28 Days Later and World War Z and mushed them into 400 pages), with unlikeable characters, terrible structure and a plot that doesn't truly go anywhere.
May 1, 2020
I'm obviously going to give my own book 5 stars, but having read it 48,000 times, I'm still not bored of it. It's much more about the living and our society than it is about zombies, which do make life a little difficult.
I hope you enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Much love.
Oliver
I hope you enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Much love.
Oliver
May 24, 2020
Basic zombie fodder
I was intending to give this 4 stars for the story as it was just another same old zombie tale. I had to remove a star for the bad proof reading though. Continual errors such as wondering when it should be wandering just spoilt it for me.
I was intending to give this 4 stars for the story as it was just another same old zombie tale. I had to remove a star for the bad proof reading though. Continual errors such as wondering when it should be wandering just spoilt it for me.
June 4, 2020
I didn’t finish the book ... it was just bland.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews