First of all for those looking at the title and wondering, this is not about zombies. This is about three very unlikely heroes who trip over a sex trafficking operation and try to do the right thing.
Here’s the blurb:
An unlikely bond is forged between three men from very different backgrounds when they serve time together in prison. A series of wrong turns and disastrous life choices has led to their incarceration. Following their release, Mangle, Decker and Tazeem stick together as they return to a life of crime, embarking on a lucrative scam. But when they stumble upon a sophisticated sex-trafficking operation, they soon realise that they are in mortal danger. The disappearance of a family member and the murder of a dear friend lead the three to delve deeper into a world of violence and deception. In their quest for retribution and justice, they put their lives on the line. Their paths cross with that of Tatiana, who has left her home country for a better life in the West – or so she thinks. She soon realises she is in the hands of ruthless, violent people, who run an operation supplying girls to meet the most deviant desires of rich and powerful men. Will she survive the horrors of The Zombie Room? Are Mangle, Decker and Tazeem brave enough to follow her there, in an attempt to set her free?
I very much appreciated the knights being less than shining in this story. Heroes can be from all walks of life. All you need to do is have the courage to do the right thing. Their distrust of the police, and worry they wouldn’t be believed upped the stakes nicely for the story since they had to dive in and get proof before they could even consider getting help.
The plot is engrossing. There’s a sense of brutal reality to it all. The characters are varied enough to keep track of. Despite showing everyone’s pov, I only felt I got a deep look into Mangle and Tatiana’s thoughts. Though I did see into the other guy’s heads enough to understand their motives in all this. There are some good twists in here.
This whole book has a gritty feel to it. So if you don’t like that kind of book, you won’t like this one. I did like that it very much captured the powerlessness most people have over the doings of that rich one percent. For that reason I felt the end did a good job. Not everything goes right. I won’t say how it ends, but it echoes the brutal reality of the rest of the novel.
I’m on the fence about a big event that Tatiana causes near the end of the book. It was a nice echo of something that happened at the beginning, but it felt a little empty. I’m not sure if that’s just because it was incredibly sad. You can make up your own mind.
Plot = good, characters = good/great, world = fascinatingly gritty, themes = awesome.
Four stars. A nice read if you like gritty books and can stand a lot of bad things happening to decent people. Don’t expect a picture perfect ending. This isn’t that kind of book.
One last nitpick. Tatiana spends most of the book deaf. This is awesome as I do like it when books remember there are different kinds of people out there, but after a short period of learning she manages to lipread perfectly. She’s hearing for most of her life, learns how to read lips, goes to a foreign country, and can understand what everyone is saying by reading their lips.
Dude, not even people born deaf have 100 percent accuracy reading lips. So, this irked me a little, but hey, at least I didn’t catch her understanding someone not looking at her (though she was strangely good at keeping up with multiple people talking at once). Small detail. I can live with it.
For more reviews on this book go to: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13568322-the-zombie-room
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