I received this book for free. I am voluntarily leaving this review and all opinions expressed herein are my own.
This is books one and two [really novellas] in the Rectify series. Book one is a standalone story and has a completed ending. Book two picks up not long after book one ends and provides a quick recap but, it ends on a cliffhanger where the story arcs are not wrapped up.
Book one centers on Dr. June Mannis. She works in a hospital. There is a pandemic disease CO-D4 which strikes its victims and within a relatively short period of time, they die and then come back to life as incredibly violent cannabalist individuals. While there is a scramble to formulate a vaccine, the only solution currently is to rectify [kill] these sick individuals prior to them coming back. However, Dr. Mannis starts to believe that not all of these sick individuals will come back violent and all of them do not need to be rectified. But no one believes her.
Book two picks up not long after book one ends and centers on Dr. James Ung – who worked with Dr. Mannis. The virus is raging out of the control and the vaccine does not appear to be working sufficiently. Major Tom Leland, who killed all the infected individuals in book one, has somewhat softened to Dr. Mannis’ ideas and tries to recruit Dr. Ung to join him in further Dr. Mannis’ work. But can they stop this snowball from rolling down the mountain?
Since these are very quick novellas, there is a not a huge amount of character development. You do get glimpses of people’s lives but not a sense of getting to know them well. However, it is the disease which is the main character here and the sense of urgency to control it which drives these novellas. The writing style, with short choppy sentences, certainly lends itself to the immediacy of the situation. The plot is fast faced and flows from one frantic situation to the next.
The narrator, Andrew Wehrlen, does a very good job at keeping the tension of the story up and conveying the desperation of the characters in trying to control that which is spiraling completely out of their grasp.