Plagued: The Ironville Zombie Quarantine Retraction Experiment (Plagued States of America Book Three)...could there be a longer title?

From the publisher:

"Book 3 of the Plagued States of America series.

When a helicopter carrying presidential hopeful Senator William Jefferson crashes in the Quarantine Zone, zombie half-breed Penelope Hope is enlisted into the most unorthodox rescue team ever assembled for a mission to save the very man leading the effort to wipe out her kind from the Plagued States of America...

With the recent destruction of Biter's Hill and Biter's Island, the last remaining sanctuary for uninfected humans inside the quarantine zone stands alone against the seemingly endless zombie horde. Tom and Penelope, survivors of the destruction at Biter's Hill, have taken up residence inside the Elevated Platform Station at Biter's Bend in the hopes of rehabilitating Penelope from her half-breed zombie past. Their plans of a normal life are put on hold, however, when Army Ranger Mason Jones arrives seeking asylum from the very man rallying against him, Tom's own father. When Tom's father's helicopter crashes deep inside the quarantine zone, Tom and Penelope enlist Mason Jones and other survivors of Biter's Island on a mission to rescue him."

My review:
 When I first saw this book on Net Galley, I didn't realize it was the third in a series. And, because it's how I roll....I can't just dive into a series, mid-stream, especially after reading the description. So I purchased and read Book One, Plagued: The Midamerica Zombie Half-Breed Experiment and, Book Two, Plagued: The Rock Island Zombie Counteractant Experiment. The first two books do a decent job of setting up the series, but I'm still not very clear on the whole "half breed zombie" thing. Born to mothers who were bitten, just as they turned into zombies? The results of experiments gone bad? Were said experiments to make more zombies? Less zombies? An army of zombies? I might be confused on this particular plot line.

 And since I'm nitpickin' here....not a big fan of the author's pseudonym. It's like three random, but sort of related words just strung together, like a version of a facebook generated "What is your porn star name? The food you last ate and the street you grew up on...." Although I did do some checking and the author has a  reason for his pseudonym. He's a  "mainstream author" who fears that if he becomes known as a "zombie" writer, he won't be taken seriously in his literary fiction writing. So he has created a "label" as opposed to a pseudonym, which he wants to be reminiscent of the dime store pocket novels. Tomes of the Soul has an excellent interview with the author that you can find here.

Ok..on to Book 3, Plagued: The Ironville Zombie Quarantine Retraction Experiment.  The series is an interesting take on the zombie genre. The author has some original ideas, and they're executed pretty well. The characters are well drawn, and we can understand their motivations. And yet, for me at least, I finished the three books with a sense of ..."meh..that was ok. I guess." Will I await the next chapter in this series? Nah. Probably won't bother with it. And I won't recommend it to my equally zombie lit loving sister. That's mostly because she has this weird tic...(yeah, big sister, I called you weird in my blog,  *tee hee). She can't start a series and not read all of them. This woman actually read ALL of the Battlefield Earth books. ALL OF THEM. There's 10 of them! 10! And I think the author died after the first one, so most of them were ghost written. The first one was good, I'll give you that, but the next was soooo bad, I didn't finish it. And she read them ALL.  (wow....exit stage left on this review...) Wait....I guess I have a weird tic too, with the "need to read them from the beginning...." But at least I'll stop!

But I digress....lets finish this up,

Review copy provided by the publisher, Storyteller Press, via Net Galley. The opinions provided by yours truly.

My rating:

Author had some great ideas, but I couldn't get enthused.