America, 1985. Anton can’t forgive his brother’s stupidity. Furious his elder sibling left on a mission without rescuing their captured family friends, the hot-headed teenager impetuously sets off to run his own dangerous extraction. But his reckless infiltration into the Soviet’s prison camp only results in his own apprehension.
Nonna never forgot war’s cold caress. A gritty WWII survivor, she’ll do whatever it takes to prepare the boy in her care from an imminent mutant zombie attack. But when she learns the youngster’s secret, she’s terrified his life is already forfeit.
Brutally tortured for the location of their remaining stronghold, Anton can barely hold on one second longer when he’s unexpectedly rescued by a desperate defector. And with the regrets from her past only fueling her protective instincts, Nonna vows to sacrifice everything to shelter her young charge.
Can they survive the conflict’s ugly reality and save the lives of those they love?
Scattered is the redemptive third tale in the Zommunist Invasion zombie apocalypse series. If you like startling bravery, gruesome battles with the undead, and deeply drawn characters, then you’ll be gripped by Camille Picott’s edge-of-your-seat story.
In this third book in the Zommunist series, our heroes are scattered (see what Camille did there?) as they each undertake their own missions to try and stop the Soviet threat.
Unusually, rather than move from group to group as time moves forward, Camille covers a stretch of time with one group, the same stretch with another, and then again with a third group. It's an unusual way of doing things, but it did let me get to know the characters better, which was nice.
For the third time, this book introduced a new style of zombie, which will add another twists for Our Heroes going forward. It's going to be interesting watching them go up against all three types at once, which I'm sure will happen at some point.
There is a minor subplot here that I didn't like, but I'm aware that it's a matter of opinion. One of the teens is trans, and Nonna spent a fair bit of the story insisting that they dress as their claimed gender, when they were clearly uncomfortable doing so. I'm very much of the opinion that gender and orientation should be up to the individual to disclose, not for others to reveal in an effort to 'help'. It worked out in this instance, but it rubbed me up the wrong way. Just my opinion. (Also, there was a big deal made of the clothes being gendered, when they were...jeans and a tank top. Without pictures it's hard to tell, of course, maybe they really did look like their gender, but to me those items aren't particularly gendered.)
That small niggle aside, though, I really enjoyed reading this and I'm looking forward to seeing how Camille will wrap it all up.
Scattered publishes on the 22nd May, 2021. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.
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