Review of Fighting To Survive (As The World Dies – A Zombie Trilogy #2) – Rhiannon Frater

April 26, 2012

Review of Fighting To Survive (As The World Dies – A Zombie Trilogy #2) – Rhiannon Frater

Picking up where The First Days ends, Fighting to Survive features the further zombie-killing, civilization-saving adventures of a pair of sexy, kick butt heroines and the men who love them. A hundred or so survivors of the zombie plague have found tenuous safety in the walled off center of a small Texas town. Now the hard work of survival begins—finding enough food; creating safe, weather-resistant shelter; establishing laws; and fighting off both the undead who want to eat them and the living bandits who want to rob and kill them.

Fighting to Survive won the Dead Letter Award for Best Novel from Mail Order Zombie. The first book in the As the World Dies trilogy, The First Days also won the Dead Letter Award and was named one of the Best Zombie Books of the Decade by the Harrisburg Book Examiner. Tor Books began bringing this series to a wider audience with the Spring 2011 publication of The First Days.

I couldn’t find a book trailer, so here’s a song!

If you thought The First Days was exciting, you better fasten your seatbelt because Fighting To Survive is one hell of a ride!

We continue from pretty much where we left off from The First Days. Watching the people in the Fort survive. In this installment the survivors move finally migrate over to the hotel, fight off more zombies, encounter Bandits, and some fights among each other occur. And once again, we have our Vigilante make another appearance which is yet another addictive aspect in these books.

I found myself blinking even LESS in this book. I could not turn away, and simply had to keep reading to find out what was going to happen to this group of awesome characters! Ok, I lie. There came a point in the book where I had to stop! I was too freaked out to keep reading. I came back, read a page, and had to stop again! Sometimes, it’s not the zombies that are the scariest things out there. It was like when I was watching the movie The Road. Great movie, but I couldn’t keep going! It totally affected my mind, and I just couldn’t do it. I had to stop. I thought it was going to be one of those moments, but with some encouragement from a fellow blogger buddy, she convinced me to keep going. And let me tell you, thank God I did!

This alone should tell you just how great Rhiannon Frater is as a storyteller. Everything in this world she has created is so real and so addicting that I was totally and completely immersed in this world of death, survival, and hope. As it was in the first book, the descriptions provided all throughout the book was top notch! I could close my eyes and picture every character, the surroundings, heck sometimes the smells of both the dead and the survivors. Not only was Fraters world building so completely awesome, but her approach to the many different relationships that are built during this time is equally addictive. One would think that love would be impossible to find and grow under such duress situations, but a lot of the characters find love amongst all the chaos…and I loved every minute of it!

We are introduced a few more unforgettable characters which only added to the awesomeness that is this trilogy! Another testament to how awesome Frater’s writing is is how I was able to feel so many different emotions when reading about the characters. I felt sadness, happiness, anger, love, awe, and HATE. Oh yes, hate was felt and on more than one occasion. It was those intense emotions that I felt while reading this book that has solidified how much I love the characters in these books! I need to know more…I need to know how everyone will fair! Will they survive? Will love endure? Who will die? Ack! So many questions.

Fans of The Walking Dead, zombie movies and books will completely devour this book, but be forewarned that you will WANT to have the third book, SEIGE, on hand. You do NOT want this ride to end!