I spent twenty years working with contractors. Colorful language doesn’t even register with me most of the time. But Adair insists on inserting curses so thick it ends up sounding childish and silly. Like a group of third graders who watched Die Hard last night and can’t wait to sound tough. A few books in, it stretched past eye-rolling silliness and really started grating on me. But of course, by then I was mildly invested. Certainly, I was past the point of getting my credit back. So I kept listening. It was torture. Not sure why I endured to the end. Then again, I used to run those tough obstacle course races, so there’s clearly something sadistically wrong with me.
The story was fine, if uninspired. A somewhat new take on the whole virus-ends-humanity thing. But through nine grueling books, almost nothing happens. They go here, kill infected people. Go back there, kill more infected. Lose people in the group. Lose entire groups. Move on, repeat. There’s never a real antagonist. Never a real goal. It’s just a lot of “dude life sucks” followed by the protagonist’s depressing self-doubt followed by his friends confirming his inadequacies. Because…yeah, he really sucks.
Dude. Do you even storyboard?
Cut the F-bombs down to something a bit more credible, insert an actual goal or quest or ANY FREAKING PLAN AT ALL, and maybe pump up an antagonist or two beyond this ridiculous “bad zombie kill girl, I find bad zombie…and keeeeel heeeem” crap.
Do all that, then republish. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to sell one or two books per credit instead of (giggles) nine.