only due to graphic violence and sexual situations,
Bookof
The world is dead, Plants gone. Animals gone. The air is thick with dust and ash, Water has turned to murky cesspools of death and decay, Life and Earth as we know it are goneat least all the good parts,
Its been almost a year since the first signs that we killed our planet began to arise, Order and humanity are gone now, replaced by vigilante justice and survival at all costs, Nine months have passed since the quarantines were put in place, Six months since we realized it was too late, and just after that the governments of the world fell,
That was nearly seven billion people ago, and now Charles has decided it is time to pack up and leave in search of the one thing still worth living forhis daughters.
With rumors of roving bands of cannibals, and even zombies, he knows making the journey is a long shot, but he has to try, He promised their dying mother that he would keep them safe and has every intention of doing just that, come hell or hungry zombies,
In a soulless world filled with nothing but pain and death, will his determination be enough to see him through to the end
Third time was the charm.
Laszlos Left Alivewas geared toward adults and had enough gore and action to keep me highly entertained, It is dystopia for sure postapocalyptic, too as we start the story with geneticallymodified organisms GMO ending up crippling the world, GMOs, for this story, were set to end world hunger and deforestationbut of course, that didn't happen as intended,
The story centers around Charles, who we find out has some survival skills, but isnt a supermanhero rather a widower trekking to Florida to find his girls.
Charles walksa lot. A little too much, so skimming is acceptable, He encounters plenty of situations where survival is difficult whether human physiology, bandits, cannibals, or the toxic environment in which he must traverse and by that I mean, walk.
a lot.
Overall, it is a quality series launch for adults, There is some repetition which begins to get skimmed walking,
daughters, avoiding large cities and stomach pains,
Laszlo is hit and miss for me, but that may be due to the author writing across different targeted demographics, The Choosing series launch pure YA, The Awakening series launch pure YA were “okay” for me, but I wasn't the intended targetaudience and I felt they didnt translate well to adults.
However, Left Alive was a fun read and was geared toward adults,
Downloaded for free and read in a couple of hours, Took my mind off the Covid for a while, It was okay
The ending was a surprise, but not really, He was asking for trouble, the way he was behaving, He is trying to talk himself into losing his humanity, and has no issue doing the deeds, but it bothers him later, The thing with Jason really bothered me, cause he thinks about it over and over, and seriously it was a kill our be killed moment, I don't know why there is so much angst, He says, he was just trying to defend his home, Wouldn't a good person give a warning Or at least lock the damn door
At the same time, this guy goes through some major hell.
And it was interesting to wonder how he would get out of each situation he had put himself in, The plot was also very interesting, I wish the book would have had him actually find his daughters,
of this book, there was no dialogue, We just had his thoughts and descriptions, Over all, it was an okay book, decently written, lots of action, no romance which I loved and a lot of deep thoughts,
I would like to see the end I hoped would come and I am sure still will, but only liked this book enough to stick with it to get that ending.
So I won't be getting the other books I the series, We are presented with a journalstyle narrative one voice, one character for the majority of time, To be honest it got a little old after a while, The world has suffered a global dieoff due to a GMO fertilizer gone amuck killing all plant life and everyone that ate of it, This plot reminds me of the Hunger book series by Jeremiah Knight, Our protagonist, Charles is traveling on foot from Michigan to Florida to reach his two daughters, The story details the usual cast of misfits Charles will come across from zombies and looters to cannibals, Charles definitely has some personal issues to deal with, which will stand out as the story progresses, Will Charles arrive in sunny Florida to reunite with his daughters You can expect some twists and turns at the end of the book along with a solid setup for book two.
Three. point. five for a perplexing start, Started out really good then got mediocre toward the end to where I was actually glad when it ended Left Alive is Thrilling
You want to know what's going to happen next.
Of course there are zombies but not in the traditional sense of I want to eat your brains zombies but they are flesh eater and they are every where you turn.
Being nice gets you no where, This is a must read, I am fascinated by Laszlo's storytelling, Get this book and you winter disappointed, This is basically a zombie/end of the world book, but this is where the similarities end, It comes at the plot from a totally different direction but it doesn't skip on the action, tension, and detail sometimes a little too graphic The characters are well written and designed with plenty of depth for the plot.
This is a good read and an interesting way to write the story, Good read
Think book keeps you reading , just when you think you know what will happen the story throws you a curve.
First off, this book is one that is a bit outside my preferred reading, Not because of genreI simply don't usually read books that are written in the first person pointofview, When I do read books written in this pointofview, they have to be tightly written or I find myself putting them down, This one was not as tightly written as I prefer, but I did push through it simply because I'm a writer, too, and I would like to think that people will give my books the same consideration.
A few things I noticed that really made the book seem humdrum to me was that it really needed a good, thorough editing by someone who does that type of thing for a living.
In the firstof the book I read it on the Kindle, the main character essentially thought the same cluster of input about his wife and two daughters about every other paragraph.
I almost put the book down, and I'll be honest, I did close it out on my Kindle and go read some short stories to give myself a break from it.
The other major issue I noticed is that all the trees and plants are dead, With all those people breathing, the world would be full of carbon dioxide pretty quickly without our natural carbon dioxide scrubbers going through photosynthesis, I'm assuming that some survived somewhere, but it would not be enough to sustain an entire planet of people, and there still seem to be a lot of people.
It had great potential for an excellent dystopian novel, and I do believe that if Laszlo had gone through a few more edits, it could have been astar novel.
It just needed a bit more polish, This wasn't a bad book, It's honestly one that I would read the rest of the series and pay for them if they aren't too expensive, This isn't a zombie story per se or anything that weird, This is more a true post apocalyptic story in the style of end of the world devastation and ash and the dying off of not just mankind but all living things.
sitelink wordpress. com/ This was an okay little read, I wasn't blown away by the writing, the style, or the editing, I felt that all of those elements needed some polish, but the story was enough to get me through it, I picked it up and put it down a couple times because there was very little action to sustain my interest, While I understand that a man walking from Detroit, Michigan to Gainesville, Florida means there's going to be long stretches of nothing, the book is onlypages.
There were some good bits of action, but for the most part, they were very short bursts, It was a free book, so I'm not going to complain, But I definitely don't have enough interest to read the other two in the series, Left Aliveis not really an apocalyptic zombie story, The author did a fine job of depicting a dying and desolate world with the gritty feelings of mans grudging attempt to remain hopeful, alive, and sane.
I never quite caught the main character Charlie's name until I looked at the Left Alive's page on Goodreads, He goes from a man that thinks about finding and protecting his daughters/dying with them and/or surviving in a world where resources are slim.
. . without any real idea of how to do this as there are no plants or animals alive that we see only dust and canned food and bottled water and wandering cannibals and zombies to someone who is throwing away maps of survivors and killing or leaving to die most anyone that threatens him, or situations in which he could be harmed he runs away and leaves his resources or possible useful things behind.
That to me isn't smart at all,
He also travels with a knife and even though guns are seemingly empty they could still be used for a scare tactic, He thinks of himself as a monster for living by killing in defense of his own life and even though it should be common knowledge that in a desert you should carry water and not travel by day.
. . he does this. He also seems to have no friends/neighbors beyond his two daughters and decreased wife to talk about, He also does not use rocks for slings or use the dead trees to make bows or arrows or fashion any kind of weapon from the dust which burns human skin.
He walks rather than trying to find a car or scooter or bike!
Whenever he was surprised to wake up I was a little bit too.
Yet his main problem was being too much alone I think which I hope is solved now, although his opinion of women could use some better sense too.
A scientist attempts to modify crop growth but it has a bad effect on the animals eating them and their toxic waste destroys all plants, Wind spread the problem across the US, causing panic and anarchyand hunger, Now the survivors who are left fear each other and try to find safety,
Our MC is Charles, who has been hiding out at his isolated cabin the woods to avoid the psychos and thieves, When the lake becomes polluted, he packs up all his supplies and leaves, Charles you would think, is a survivalistuntil he falls for the oldest trick in the world, Put a girl in the middle of the road to get the car to stop for her, then her armed friends ambush you and steal your supplies.
REALLY smart. If our hero is outwitted that easily, I will have issues with him,
The whole story, or at least what I read, was one long monologue of Charles on the move and it was only broken up by the horror book ambush cliche.
It wasn't keeping my attention so I decided to DNF, .