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Z2134

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It’s 2134 in a dystopian America, one century after a series of zombie plagues first infected then obliterated much of the world’s population.

The survivors formed six walled Cities throughout the continent, all under the rule of a totalitarian government that enforces strict control over its populace.

You must obey your government.

You must be a good citizen.

You must be a productive citizen.

You must not break the law.

Or The City Watch will find you and arrest you.

Jonah Lovecraft, a former Watcher, was arrested for the murder of his wife. Like most criminals, he has one chance at freedom ― to participate in The Darwin Games, a televised survival show pitting two players from each city against one another in The Barrens, the uninhabited areas outside the City Walls.

He’ll also have to face another enemy ― the zombies still roaming The Barrens.

As he fights for his freedom against impossible odds, his daughter, Anastasia, stumbles into people who have information about her father ― information that will change her life forever.

While putting her in the crosshairs of her father’s enemies.

Z 2134 is the first book of a dystopian trilogy from the bestselling authors of Yesterday’s Gone.

306 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 20, 2022

139 people are currently reading
117 people want to read

About the author

Sean Platt

334 books826 followers
Sean loves writing books, even more than reading them. He is co-founder of Collective Inkwell and Realm & Sands imprints, writes for children under the name Guy Incognito, and has more than his share of nose.

Together with co-authors David Wright and Johnny B. Truant, Sean has written the series Yesterdays Gone, WhiteSpace, ForNevermore, Available Darkness, Dark Crossings, Unicorn Western, The Beam, Namaste, Robot Proletariat, Cursed, Greens, Space Shuttle, and Everyone Gets Divorced. He also co-wrote the how-to indie book, Write. Publish. Repeat.

With Collective Inkwell
Yesterday's Gone: Post Apocalyptic - LOST by way of The Stand
WhiteSpace: Paranoid thriller on fictitious Hamilton Island
ForNevermore: YA horror that reads nothing like YA Horror
Available Darkness: A new breed of vampire thriller
Dark Crossings: Short stories, killer endings

With 47North
Z 2134: The Walking Dead meets The Hunger Games
Monstrous: Beauty and the Beast meets The Punisher

With Realm & Sands
Unicorn Western: The best story to ever come from a stupid idea
The Beam: Smart sci-fi to make you wonder exactly who we are
Namaste: A revenge thriller like nothing you've ever read
Robot Proletariat: The revolution starts here
Cursed: The old werewolf legend turned upside down
Greens: Retail noir comedy
Space Shuttle: Over the top comedy with all your favorite sci-fi characters
Everyone Gets Divorced: Like "Always Sunny" and "How I Met Your Mother" had a baby on your Kindle

Sean lives in Austin, TX with his wife, daughter, and son.
Follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/seanplatt
 (say hi so he can follow you back!)

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5 stars
76 (44%)
4 stars
46 (27%)
3 stars
28 (16%)
2 stars
14 (8%)
1 star
6 (3%)
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
Profile Image for Elena Linville-Abdo.
Author 0 books98 followers
March 23, 2023
Stars: 1 out of 5

This is the second book I try by these authors, and I am less then impressed once again. Though to tell the truth, this seems to be a reprint of a much earlier work, which is probably why it is so bad. I mean, I gave Pattern Black 2 stars where this one barely scrapped a single one.

This book is tries very hard to be a cross between 1984, The Hunger Games, and the Walking Dead. Unfortunately, it does this very poorly, so neither of those three components really work. On a personal note, I was there for the zombies. Unfortunately, there are too little zombies in this book. They barely serve as a plot device. So that added to my disappointment with the book. If you come to it with a different lens, you might enjoy the battle of the "little man" against the tyrannical regime. I didn't.

Probably because those parts of the story are also rather poorly realized. Subtle this book is not.  The author has to telegraph every action, every plot point, and every plot twist in the book. It's like he doesn't trust the reader to get it, unless he is hammered on the head with it. This gets annoying really fast. I can get a hint. I don't need everything spelled out for me. 

It also devalues the events in the book, because that plot twist about City 7? That could have had such a big impact if it wasn't telegraphed from a high mountain several chapters ago.

I also couldn't care less about the characters, so nothing that happened to them was particularly shocking to me. I know I was supposed to root for Jonah in the Darwin Games, but I didn't know him from Adam at that time, so I didn't really care if he won or if Bear killed him. Honestly, the little we had of Bear's backstory made him a lot more compelling as a character.

And the least said about Ana, the better, because she is a typical YA dystopia heroine, and I stopped reading YA years ago precisely because I couldn't stand that stereotype. 

I would also like to point out that this book is not a complete story. It ends in a cliffhanger. Nothing is resolved, nobody is saved or even achieved their goals. There is no resolution or even payout for investing hours of your time into this story. If you want to know what happens to the characters, you will have to pick up the next book, I guess. Unfortunately, I don't care enough to do so.

PS: I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Profile Image for kim.
935 reviews50 followers
November 16, 2022
Thank you, Netgalley, for the ARC!

Life aside, this book took me a bit to get into. It didn’t help that I felt like I retained nothing as I was reading it. There are The Hunger Games vibes which I always love, but it didn’t do much for me here. I wish I could’ve enjoyed it.
Profile Image for Jemima Pett.
Author 28 books340 followers
October 19, 2022
Z2134 opens in the middle of a fight to the death. The stakes are high: the protagonist, whom we immediately warm to, is in a broadcast game where the winner gets to live in the wonderful City 7 forever. The losers die. If the zombies don’t get them the other contestants will. And the contestants are all miscreants, sentenced to participate by the dystopian cities’ justice departments.

I really admired the writing of this book, particularly the opening, despite the lurid details of the soon-to-be-many fights with zombies. Beautifully choreographed in all their putrid flesh-dripping, undead eyeballing, lumbering power. I managed to get through the first phase of zombies, remindeing myself I didn’t need to read every zombie encounter. This helped, since there are plenty of episodes with no smell of the z-word. Jonah is fighting to free himself, so he can go back and free his daughter, Ana, and son Adam. With dad gone, these individuals get to have chapters of their own stories. This nicely reveals depths of depravity in the City Watch that makes Mission Impossible look like Enid Blyton.

There are seriously complicated plot devices and switchbacks in the ‘who is deceiving who?’ stakes. I was really enjoying it until about 95% of the way through. That’s when I realised this was not going to finish the story at 100%. No…to be continued. It’s not even a Fellowship of the Ring sort of cliffhanger. Jonah has not completed a task, or its consequence. Daughter Ana is high and dry, and son Adam is definitely in deep s…. No, to find out exactly what happens, and whether… you have to go for the next book ‘in the trilogy.’

So, it’s not a trilogy, it’s a three-part serial. There’s a difference. So despite it being a really good read, it loses a full star for being incomplete. I can’t justify giving it five stars before deductions, because I don’t have the wow factor left in me.

But if you like zombie stories, and don’t mind expecting to read all three ‘books’ to get the satisfaction of an outcome, then you’ll enjoy it.
416 reviews1 follower
August 9, 2022
Stressful choices

Unusual story about overcoming personal vendettas. Confusing point author was making except that every character was manipulated into false hope. Not stand alone but interesting read.
Profile Image for Icy-Cobwebs-Crossing-SpaceTime.
5,641 reviews329 followers
September 12, 2022
First in a Dystopian Trilogy, Z2134 is vividly, viscerally, alive with Dystopian Society and Culture. In the not-so-distant future, what remains of "civilization" following the Zombie plagues is confined to six walled cities in a Culture reminiscent of Orwell's 1984 [also Stalinist Russia], citizens must never step out of line (or beware the Watchers) and are constantly encouraged to spy on and report others. When a member of the City Watch is accused of murdering his wife, and sentenced to participation in the wilderness Darwin Games [yes, Zombies], his brave daughter turns to the city's Underground to find answers.
Profile Image for Melissa.
379 reviews25 followers
August 29, 2023
1⭐️

I’ve read these authors before, Yesterdays Gone, and I was kind of meh about it, and not interested in continuing the series or episodes. But I am a fan of all things zombies so I thought I would give this a shot.

I have come to realize these authors are just not for me. It took me a while to get through this and then it ended on a cliffhanger, but I really don’t care enough about the characters to continue on to the next one.

Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review.
Profile Image for John Podlaski.
Author 11 books68 followers
August 28, 2022
Z2134 by Sean Platt held my interest from the beginning. A dystopian story similar to Hunger Games with zombies included in the mix. When purchasing this book, I thought it was a stand-alone story as indicated on the Amazon book page (book 1 of 1). Needless to say, I was quite disappointed at the end of the book when the story ended with a big cliffhanger.

Otherwise, the story is well written, without errors, and flows well between the different POV of each character as they tell their portion of the story. I will probably not wait for the next book in the series as there are so many stand-alone good books on the market. If you enjoy reading a series, you'd most likely enjoy this book.
54 reviews4 followers
November 21, 2022
Goodness....I don't usually go in for zombie fights, or descriptions of gore. But, this one redeemed itself in the story line. It feels a bit The Hunger Games in the beginning in the fight to the death Darwin Games, but the zombies do provide a twist and opponent issue I wasn't quite expecting.

At the heart is the corruption of their society. Ana is caught up in it, quite unexpectedly, as she's really just learning about it after her mother is murdered, seemingly at her father's hand. Her brother Adam is young and impressionable, and now that he's on his own, being manipulated.

Then there's her father, Jonah. Tricked by the "good guys," then set up and abandoned. Now he's trying against all odds to figure out just where the lies are, and save his family.

What has me bothered, as a reader, is that this is billed as a trilogy. Yet, book one just stops. No mid-way resolution of ANY problems, no particular build up cliffhanger. I read now that the story was originally episodic in Kindle Serial and I feel like it was probably broken up into 3 equal parts, rather than natural and understandable places.

Can't say I'll pick up the next installment, because of the way this one just fell apart for me at the end.
Profile Image for Daniel Guerrero.
18 reviews
October 11, 2023
Cuando leí la descripción del libro y me encontré con Zombies en un panorama parecido a los juegos del hambre, dije ¿Que puede salir mal?
La historia empieza en medio de la acción, todas las acciones que dieron paso a los sucesos ya pasaron y los autores las van contando a partir de flashbacks, relatos y dialogo entre personajes. Esto hace que el ritmo del libro se sienta vacío, no se siente a la historia avanzar y por varios capítulos la historia y los personajes se sienten estancados.

Puedo resaltar de este libro la accion y el concepto de los juegos de Darwin, Los personajes principales Jonah y Anastasia y el arco de estos dos cargan la historia y son lo suficientemente interesantes para terminar el libro. Sin embargo, los personajes secundarios de quedan algo cortos, creo que se podría recortar este libro a la mitad y dejar la historia principal, prácticamente igual.

Lo más fatal para este libro es intentar tomar un concepto tipo los juegos del hambre he intentar hacer algo parecido. Cuando tomas algo tan bien hecho es muy fácil quedarse a medias. Y el Cliffhanger que nos botaron al final no creo que sea suficiente para hacerme leer la trilogia completa.
Profile Image for Reads_Must .
960 reviews13 followers
October 23, 2023
Z2134
Sci-Fi
Sean Platt & David Wright
⭐️⭐️

I was disappointed with this book. It started very suddenly with the MMC halfway through a fight with some zombies. I actually went back to check that this wasn't the 2nd book in the series multiple times because it just seemed like a lot of info and world building was missing.

The plot itself was boring. I was expecting more zombies, but this book was almost a copy of The Hunger Games with a few zombies sprinkled in. It was like the authors forgot they were meant to be included.

The errors and the typos were frustrating at times but they could easily be fixed.

The POVs would switch back and forth in the middle of a chapter when it was meant to be a POV from a specific character, which was confusing.

I never learnt much about the characters themselves so I didn't connect with them.
Profile Image for Kelsey.
37 reviews4 followers
October 10, 2022
Thank you #NetGalley for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Dread Nation Meets Hunger Games Meets Ashfall Meets the Uglies....This was like a mash-up of a lot of great dystopian novels and it works. There is a lot going on here but it all seems to flow and make sense because each theme or area is taken with care and well thought out. Characters are well developed and don't feel like they are just there to keep the story going. Even the flawed characters have you invested in their stories and journeys. The multiple perspectives really work in this story as it sets up the rest of the series. I will continue to read this series and would recommend it to mature students who have an interest in dystopian and can handle graphic violence.
Profile Image for Debra Schwitzer.
132 reviews1 follower
August 9, 2022
Really good read!

I have always found it awful that mankind can be so despicable. Making games out of killing zombies is one thing but murdering people just to win a game? Well that is how it is. The first show of this type I saw was Running Man and then many more after that but this story combines the two to make it more edge of the seat! At least the people who are fighting each other (and zombies) are the worst kind of people. Or are they really? I don't want to give any spoilers so I can't tell you but I can say that I wouldn't want to live in this kind of dystopian future. How did I like the story- five stars and I am looking for the next in this series.
Profile Image for Vanessa.
842 reviews60 followers
December 25, 2023
It's impossible not to make certain comparisons.

If you write about zombies, you will get compared to Romero and The Walking Dead.
If you write about a dystopian authoritarian society and a violent gameshow, you are going to get compared to Hunger Games and Battle Royale (or maybe just to the year 2020...).
The trick is: get compared favorably!

This is me comparing this book favorably to those similarly themed works.

I truly look forward to reading the next book to find out what happens next.
820 reviews3 followers
November 6, 2023
Novella 1

This short novella had errors throughout and was predictable. The overall had promise, but fell short with the back and forth with characters. Most of the story revolved around the daughter and father, but also had the brother and others from different points of view. There was a lot of information and having so many characters made the book less interesting and not investing the reader to like 1 or 2 characters but trying for most of them was a waste.
Profile Image for Donna Heard.
141 reviews3 followers
January 22, 2023
Suspenseful

Wow, my mouth is still hanging open. This is a different kind of zombie story.
If you like zombies and hunger games, you will enjoy this book. If you commit a crime, you could end up in the Barrens fighting for your life in hopes of a better life. There is action and suspense. The story is well written and engaging.
Profile Image for Tony Barkley.
44 reviews
August 15, 2022
Let the games begin!

Good story, hope the future doesn't really turn out like this. Zombies would be bad enough, but to be put in a life or death "game" adds a whole new twist. While keeping it all in the family adds more misery on top of it all.
72 reviews
April 28, 2023
Review of Z2134

WOW! This was a real twister! You faked me out through the whole book! Never saw THAT ending coming, and I usually do. Kudos!! I would readily recommend this book to anyone who likes Sherlock' convoluted mysteries. Good read!
Profile Image for jonathan sanford.
191 reviews1 follower
November 20, 2023
Brilliant

I wasn’t too sure what to expect from this book but it’s basically like an adult’s version of the hunger games but with zombies! I really enjoyed the way it was written and I can not wait to read more!!!
Profile Image for Sam.
2,553 reviews41 followers
November 26, 2023
This was an enjoyable zombie adventure! A good dystopian story, with a strong female character & some good ideas! A typical government controlled society is the tyrant of this book & the zombies are more of a background pest I felt, rather than the main theme. Still a good read!
582 reviews3 followers
December 11, 2023
A good book to enjoy.

You are taken to a very different world that expects people to believe them only , and this is were everything goes crazy. The author did a good job with the book.
Profile Image for Scott.
Author 33 books30 followers
February 25, 2024
Familiar yet unique!

Felt like a lot of familiar tropes put together in a satisfying manner, with interesting characters to root for and a compelling story overall. I enjoyed this book a great deal and will move on to the next in the series.
Profile Image for Jason Reed.
152 reviews9 followers
January 18, 2025
Awesome start

The world building and character development are awesome. The story engaging. The characters are compelling. I didn't know what to expect going in, but got grabbed off the bat and am off to book two.
Profile Image for Tony Duxbury.
Author 9 books73 followers
August 24, 2022
An entertaining read. A cross between the zombie apocalypse and the hunger games.
2 reviews
September 30, 2022
On the edge of your seat

This book has many twists and turn. Will keep you reading and on the edge of your seat. Well worth your time.
Can hardly wait for the next book
1 review
January 26, 2023
Utterly amazing

Utterly amazing book I could not put it down I was totally hooked on the storyline a must read for all ages
Profile Image for Billy Barfield.
191 reviews3 followers
January 10, 2024
well done

I cant wait to read the next book, who could have thought that the hunger games plus the walking dead could be so good. I think it would be a good movie.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews

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