So…the other night I started reading this book based on my mom’s recommendation and she was right, I was immediately sucked in. So much so in fact, that in the middle of the night I woke my husband up (I’m not exactly sure that I was fully awake, since I do sleep walk and talk) and told him to get “all the guns out” and that I was going to pack a kit for us and the kids. Flabbergasted, he watched as I peered out the window and then hustled around in the dark, not fully explaining myself. I then proceeded to grab a trash bag and put some of my daughter’s pants in a bag and my one son’s stuffed Rudolf doll…and that’s all I packed. When he finally figured out what I was doing, he said, “weren’t you just telling me about the plot of this book?” and then I snapped out of it and went back to sleep. Yeaaaaaahhhh…I don’t think I’d do well in an apocalypse I guess, unless someone needs 20 pair of 2T pants.
The plot of the Purge of Babylon is nothing revolutionary, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying it (and/or sleepwalking and talking about it). It opens in Houston where a SWAT team is called to deal with a disturbance. That disturbance turns out to be a trap, set by some seriously smart, but seriously undead creatures. Our heroes, Will and Danny, after losing most of their men, learn by accident that silver is the only thing that can kill these ghouls (as Will calls them). We meet a woman named Kate, an ad designer who survives by the skin of her teeth and the help of a tire iron. She joins forces with a 14 year old kid named Luke, and together they make it through that first night, that basically wiped out the human race. This was a carefully planned uprising, occurring in all major cities on the same night. We don’t know how or why these things were able to coordinate such an attack but it happens. As Will states later, “They’re dead, not stupid”. It’s this statement that makes the ghouls scary. These things can track, adapt and are actively seeking to virtually wipe out the human race. But they need human blood to live…so they also have body farms where they can harvest blood from live human hosts. I think that might be one of my worst nightmares. Please don’t let vampire-like creatures take me to a blood farm please…ok?
At times, the story is a bit tedious because once our cast of characters meet up (there are a few more than the aforementioned), they basically just take orders from Will and Danny because of their military experience and move from safe house to safe house, battling these ghoulish creatures doing just about everything they can to “almost” get killed. But that’s ok, it was fast paced, it had tension and I kept on reading it! There are few things that separate this book from your typical “something wipes out the population and that something is like a zombie vampire like creature” kind of story, but I don’t want to go into any spoilers. This is the first book in a what I think is a five book series, so it appears I have some reading to do. I’m especially excited because it picks up with a different group of survivors in another location. Ultimately, I think both groups will merge together and more ghoully shenanigans will commence. If you like the Strain then you’d probably get into this. It’s nothing more than an action movie on pages; lots of fun, not a whole lot of substance and characters that you’ve seen before in books and movies but with different names…but honestly? I didn’t care. It was a lot of fun to read and clearly, it stuck in my subconscious mind even when I wasn’t reading. Now…to plan my actual survival list!
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