The Great Fall: Infection By Cillian D’Arcy

If  you were to choose at random a set of 10 “post-apocalyptic” novels by new or upcoming authors, I’d put money down that seven or eight of them would be zombie related.  It seems that if you want your characters to have to deal with a breakdown of society along with threats to their physical security, having their neighbors turn into mindless killing machines is an easy way to get a story going.

But just because a book is “Yet Another Zombie Apocalypse Novel” (YAZAN, you heard it here first) that doesn’t mean it can’t be entertaining.  Even without introducing something new or different to the standard zombie outbreak scenario, if it’s done well, it can be an enjoyable read.

One such book, in my humble opinion, is The Great Fall: Infection by Cillian D’Arcy.

I came across Cillian’s book when he joined the Post-Apocalyptic Forum and introduced himself.  I was in between books, and I figured 99 cents was a small price to pay to support a new author.  So I grabbed it for my Kindle, and was able to get through it in just a few lunch hours.

All you zombie purists out there will want me to be clear that The Great Fall: Infection is not technically a zombie story, it’s a novel of the infected.  They’re not rage-filled runners like from 28 Days Later, and they’re not exactly traditional shamblers either, but they are fairly mindless, and they do like to bite.

The story focuses on just a handful of characters, primarily Jamie, a young teacher, and Danny, one of his teenage students, as they attempt to escape the city and make their way cross-country in search of Jamie’s girlfriend.  They come across few other survivors until they find Yana, an apparently ordinary young woman who becomes more mysterious and enigmatic as the story progresses.

The book is fairly short, and is clearly meant to be just the first part of a longer series.  But even though I’ve read what feels like a million outbreak stories, I still liked this one.  I enjoyed the relationship between Jamie and Danny as their struggle to survive draws them together and there was just a hint of a broader mystery that makes me really look forward to getting my hands on the next part when it becomes available, which according to Cillian might be as early as this Christmas.

The Great Fall: Infection is only available as an ebook for now, on Amazon or Smashwords, but for only 99 cents, it’s a no-brainer for any fan of the genre with an e-reader.