Diaries of the Damned Blog Tour: Review & Excerpt

Diaries of the Damned by Alex Laybourne

The dead have risen and a desperate struggle for power has begun. The military are evacuating all survivors in passenger planes. With their destination unknown, one group of survivors led by a journalist named Paul Larkin, decide to share their experiences with the hope that when combined, their stories will reveal some answers that the government had not been willing to give themselves.

Nine survivors have banded together, determined to tell their tale of survival. None of them realized that as they stood to tell their tales that they stood on the brink of discovering a conspiracy the likes of which the world has never seen.

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Born and raised in the coastal English town Lowestoft, it should come as no surprise (to those that have the misfortune of knowing this place) that I became a horror writer.

From an early age I was sent to schools which were at least 30 minutes drive away and so spent the most of my free time alone, as the friends I did have lived too far away for me to be able to hang out with them in the weekends or holidays.

I have been a writer as long as I can remember and have always had a vivid imagination. To this very day I find it all too easy to just drift away into my own mind and explore the world I create, where the conditions always seem to be just perfect for the cultivation of ideas, plots, scenes, characters and lines of dialogue everything basically, and when the time is right, I can simply pluck them from the allotment of my mind serve them up on the pages of whatever work is to be their home.

I am married and have four children and my biggest dream for them is that they grow up and spend their lives doing what makes them happy, whatever that is.

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Well this is most certainly going to be one of the best (and goriest) reviews I have ever done. Allow me to start off with saying that I was never much of a zombie fan. I was always more of a... werewolf... vampire... witch fan. But this book completely turned my opinion around.

When I first started reading this, I did not think that I would enjoy it. I really didn't. The beginning was slow at first, but soon it got interesting. I loved how the reader gets absorbed into the plot... slowly... reigned... in... It was enthralling.

Then! We get into the gory details that zombies are known for. When I first began getting into the gory details, I found myself enjoying all of the thrills, all the of gore, all the EWWWW!!!!! that the author presents us with.

One of the best things about being an author, one of the things I admire most, is the ability to change perspectives. I absolutely loved how Mr. Laybourne was able to switch from one character to another and still have the book make sense. Being able to take one person's perspective and switch it around to someone else's is not that easy to do because the remainder of the story may not make as much sense as one wants. However, this is perfect because not only does the author switch characters, he also switches back to the main protagonist, the writer telling the story, and has him collect stories of the actual apocalypse. That is admirable to me because as a writer myself, I find that changing perspectives is difficult to do.

As a whole, the book is something highly admirable. Romance, goriness, and zombies (!) are all a huge part of this book that make it worth reading. Especially if you want a scare!!! Be ready to have nightmares!

My Rating:

Paul Larkin sat in his seat and fastened his seatbelt. His body was caked with sweat and dried blood. His ears rang from the gunshots, and his ankle was swollen again; remnants of an injury he acquired jumping from the first floor window of his suburban home. At least, it used to be suburbia, before everything went to shit.

He sat back and let out a long, deep breath. Shock threatened to take hold of him, so he closed his eyes and waited. The plane filled up and the cries of those refused admittance echoed down the walkway, swiftly followed by the sound of their execution. Paul spared but the most fleeting of moments thinking about it. He found it strange how killing and death had become such a large part of his life.

“Excuse me,” a fragile sounding voice stirred Paul from the calm place he had just started to settle into. “I believe this is my seat.” An elderly woman, late seventies at best stood before him, her face was smeared with blood, while one eye had been covered by a filthy rag that had been hastily secured to her face with what looked like duct tape.

“I’m sorry…” Paul asked, confused. “Seat 17b. This is my seat.” The woman waved the ticket in Paul’s face.

Paul said nothing, but gave the woman a look which screamed, ‘the world as we knew it has ended, are you seriously going to complain that I’m in your seat’. If she could read his expression, she showed no signs of it. So with another heavy sigh, this one of frustration, Paul undid his belt and scooted one seat over.

“Thank you. I don’t mean to be rude, but after all that has happened, I feel the need to remain proper about some things,” she said as she sat down. There was an odor to her person that Paul found distinctly repelling, yet she had clearly gotten through the scanners at the gate.

“It’s fine,” he answered her, closing his eyes once more.