Chaos - John O'Brien

I rated this 1/10

This hard-hitting, action-packed series begins with Jack Walker being suddenly thrust into a world where the infrastructure which cherished Armani suits, night clubs, fast and expensive cars and watching the daily stock market are gone. Left in its place is the material world mankind built but a majority of the population has vanished; replaced by a new, savage, unrelenting, cunning, animalistic species which hunts and operates at night.

Read from my iPhone.

I was mostly attracted to the jacket of this book, it's high impact; really well presented and gave me the urge to buy. I had mega expectations because I love apocalyptic adventures!

The first thing that struck me upon reading, was the fact that the narrative was jarring - first person present tense "I do this, I say that" just doesn't lend itself to writing unless it is really special, and this just wasn't. There were so many uncomfortable elements to the writing style that I just couldn't finish it.

O'Brien had the tendency to over explain everything... (ie: "Windows staring emptily" instead of "Empty Windows") This made it difficult not to skip through prose at times, but I really didn't want to read a full page on a door being opened. Sometimes when the narrator is thinking to himself, O'Brien adds it in as part of his usual narrative, and other times he uses italics instead. Again, this jarred the text and made me aware of his writing style.

It seems to me an inconceivable coincidence that everyone except the protagonist's family and his son's girlfriend have vanished or turned into zombies. And even the zombies are extremely sparse. The characters are robotic and lacking in personality. The narrator's children are perfect and agree with everything he says...

"Don't you want me to come with you and cover you?" Robert asks.
"No, just stay here. You have my back," I answer.
"Okay, Dad."

On top of this, there is a lengthy cut away flashback to the main character flying a military aircraft and I have absolutely no idea what it was there to achieve!

I'm sorry to say that I only managed to read 20% of this book (or 50 pages), but I'm not one to put a book down easily and I do usually try to make it to 100 pages at least. I tried but just couldn't do it here. I loved the idea of the story, but I think it could have been executed better.