A Darker Shade of Dead

by Bianca D'Arc

[inlibrisveritas]

I was a little skeptical about the combination of zombies and romance, it seemed a little odd to me. To me zombies are terrifying, great to read and watch but scary as hell, so to add a main romantic storyline just reads odd to me. To be honest I’m still not sure I like it, it’s just too unrealistic for my tastes. The characters are fairly stereotypical despite their new and fancy roles as a military commander and a scientist. The woman is still the independent, strong, yet silent type who is unaware of her appeal and the man is the uber confident and physically wonderful sex god. Nothing new there, good characters for a story without a storyline but kind of flat for one that does. Now the zombie storyline, there is an actual storyline…or there was until the sex got in the way. It's pretty interesting, and I will admit to having missed out on the books before this one since it wasn't listed as a series at the time. So I'm sure there are things I still don't know that would probably make this more enjoyable for me. The way the zombie outbreak started is fairly standard but I liked Sandra's part in it. But then Matt and Sandra get together and suddenly zombies are no longer important, it becomes relationship first and zombies second.I got tired of them having sex every 5 pages. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy that type of story too but that wasn't what I was looking for in a book that takes on a heavy topic like zombies. I'm a firm believer that if you are going to create a storyline (outside the erotic genre) then you should stick with it, not half way neglect it for a romance. Their relationship is an enjoyable one, it's just not at all what I was expecting out of this.

As I said before this is number three in a series, it doesn’t tell you that anywhere on this book so I was a little lost at first but I caught up pretty quickly. The author did a nice job of recapping in a believable way. I personally don’t think I’ll be reading the other books in this series unless I happen across them and they are cheap (or free). It gets a three because it wasn’t terrible and it wasn’t wonderful, it’s fairly standard.