Procure I Spied A Pale Horse Edited By Mark Timlin Print

was OK. It was an easy read but didn't delve into human nature as much as the kind of dystopian books I generally prefer read it many years ago and reread it a few mths ago.
Really liked it. One of Timlin's best books Garth Merenghi does the end of the world, Bizarre but entertaining This reminded me of sitelinkThe Stand by sitelinkStephen King, manmade super flu kills off most of the population and the aftermath.
Very good book. Enjoyed it. Freaking awesome!! As the new millennium approaches, it is the end of the world for John in more ways than one, for his wife and child are dead, and society lies in ruins as a plague devastates the world.
When a pregnant young girl enters his life, he finds he has more to fight for than he imagined, As "I Spied a Pale Horse" begins, an apocalyptic event has already occured and we are introduced to protaganist John and his battle for survival in the aftermath.
And battle it is, for this is quite an action orientated story, Flashbacks throughout the novel fill in the details of John's life before, during and after the disaster, which was a "Black Death" plague that killed almost everyone.
Like the plague in sitelinkThe Stand, a handful of people are immune to the virus, However, this is where any similarities between the two books end as King's masterpiece is in a completely different league,

I Spied a Pale Horse is a fairly short book and certainly a quick read, The fast pace leaves little time for characterisation and no time to get bored, It does a reasonable job of showing how having to survive in such a world could change a person, I've read a number of PA novels and this one is neither the best or worst, It's entertaining enough and written in an easy to read style, Most fans of the PA genre would find it worth reading, particularly those who feel that actions speak louder than words, I read a LOT of Apocalyptic/Post Apocalypse books but for some reason this one has been flying below my radar and it was only by accident I found it.
How have I missed this one for so long! I'm so glad I chanced

upon it because it's brilliant! I don't know why this doesn't have a bigger following and isn't better known and fans of this genre are missing out if they haven't read this because it's one of the better ones I've read lately.


One of the reasons I really got into it is because it's set in the UK, which is a nice change from the usual American setting.
It makes for a more realistic read if I have half an idea of the places and practices that are written about, I think that the 'realism' is what really makes this book though, there's no supernatural reasoning for the end of the world, there's nobody with special powers or abilities, there are no mutations or freaks of nature.
. . it's just a group of people trying to survive an event of apocalyptic proportions, It's great.

I loved the main character and his companions too, I hated the people they hated, I really liked the people they liked, I was scared for them when they were in danger and I was sad alongside them too.
I'm amazed that such a small book could have packed so much into it, I was really sad when I reached the end, Although, the end makes me want to believe that somewhere in the future there will be another book to follow, I think it ends here though and I'll have to imagine what the future holds for the lead character, but I can hope,

I wish there were more books like this one, Good, old fashioned, last man standing type stories with no monsters or otherworldly beings or souped up mental powers, Just a person/people with only the clothes they stand up in, trying to rebuild a semblance of a life with what is left over from their old world.
I love all that.

I definitely would recommend this! Not the greatest apocalyptic novel by a long way,

It's your standard endoftheworld affair a random plague / outbreak wipes outof the world, and the survivors turn to scavenging and murder to survive.


It all happens surprisingly fast really, Relative normality one day albeit with a fair few people dropping dead each day then one night the main 'hero' spends his last night with his wife amp child and next day the whole country has broken down and are killing eachother for no real reason.
I can't really believe society would fall apart quite so rapidly, but hey, Who knows.

As far as the characters go, the main 'hero' suffers from a severe lack of likeability he's basically a violent murderer just like everyone else and becomes one surprisingly quickly too.
The rest of the characters are pretty onedimensional: The women in this story are reduced to either just cliché prostitutes / sex slaves in need of saving, or cooks / cleaners that look after the men with no personality of their own at all.
Aside from one pair who are virtually only identified as 'lesbians that bat for the other team' yes, that's the complexity of the dialogue in this book with nothing much else to distinguish them, even though they're part of the core of characters in this story.


I also got tired of half the chapters being pretty quiet but ending with clunky forced tension like "it was all calm for now, but little did I know it wasn't going to be like that for long" or words to that effect.
You can get away with that once or maybe twice in a story, but it happened far too often here,

It's all rather predictable really, There's no real point to anything and it has no particular commentary on society or humanity that such endoftheworld books are generally good for, Just a bloke and his ugly mate killing people off so they can take their stuff, Yawn.

It was't awful though, The story did keep me reasonably interested just to see what happened, and there were a few tense cliffhangers in there, And it wasn't especially long so mostly didn't overstay it's welcome, But there are plenty better books of this ilk out there, aka sitelink Johnny Angelo, sitelink Tony Williams, sitelink Jim Ballantyne, sitelink Lee Martin, Mark Timlin lives in east London, has a Rolex and drives flash old American cars, aka sitelink Johnny Angelo, sitelink Tony Williams, sitelink Jim Ballantyne, sitelink Lee Martin, Mark Timlin lives in east London, has a Rolex and drives flash old American cars, sitelink.