When you walk down a London street in the early hours of the morning, you expect to see a few people unsteady on their feet, staggering around and struggling to get home. Warren’s used to this; it’s the norm.What he’s not used to is encountering old women, barely able to walk, with blood covering their torso and murder in their eyes.Zombies have been in the media for decades, thanks to Romero and … thanks to Romero and the rise of the undead in the media. When Warren sees that woman in the street he knows exactly what he’s encountered, and does the first thing he can think of; after a quick bit of research and seeing the city rapidly descending into chaos, he gets the hell out of there.
Taking refuge with his sister in a suburb of Sussex, they make a plan to stay out the infection savaging the country. Transport routes are closed, and the government, pulling the strings from afar, has ordered citizens to be disarmed to support the fightback in the cities.
Warren and Carla find themselves thwarted at every turn. All they want to do is survive. How long can they last it out when the undead won’t rest, and the worst of humanity rise to the top to show their true colours?
From bestelling horror author Warren Fielding, Great Bitten will appeal to fans of first person horror, dark horror and horror comedy; join our protagonist as he fights back against the odds.
Warren will be a hero, whether he likes it or not.
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Review from 2014
This was the first book I’d ever read about a zombie apocalypse – and I LOVED it! Because it’s not about zombies, really – okay, there’s a fair bit of gory description, but this is a book about people, about human nature, about how in any microcosm of society (like the group of survivors on the pier), there still rise up the leaders, the sheep, the carers, the power hungry, the practical, the weak, the turncoats, the good and the evil.
I so much liked Warren, the main character (I love intelligent, practical people who don’t mince their words), and had a certain affection for his sister Carla, and brother in law Rick. The character of dastardly ‘Doughy’ Austin was brilliantly portrayed. It’s a sharp, funny book, as well as being so tragic. Loads of astute observations, and so many thought provoking aspects – how Warren felt so ‘alive’ because all he had to concentrate on was survival. What was also so notable was, of course, how quickly society breaks down and how priorities change; I liked the bit where he found a twenty pound note in his pocket and saw it as just a bit of purple toilet paper.
This book really needs a sequel – I was trying to make it end less quickly when I got to 96%, and I so want to know what happens next. Negatives? There are a few editing/proofreading errors, but they’re nothing horrendous and don’t stop me wanting to give this five stars.
I reviewed the audibook version of this book.
In Warren Fielding’s, Great Bitten : Outbreak we follow the author as the main character in a World War Z(the book, not the movie) type recollection of the outbreak of a zombie virus in the UK as the reporter turned survivor escapes London and makes his way to safety.
The safety doesn’t last long as Warren, his sister Carla and her boyfriend Rick come to grips with the new zombie reality as society collapses all around them. They leave Carla’s home and go in search of a safe haven. Eventually ending up with a batch of not so trustworthy individuals that they must take shelter with in order to survive.
What I liked about this story?
I haven’t read many zombie stories that take place in the UK, so it was interesting to hear something that depicted things from that side of the planet.
I enjoyed the characters interactions, for me, it reminded me a lot of the characters in Douglas Adam’s, Hitchhiker’s Guide Series, this could simply be regular old british humor, but it amused me to listen to their absurd observational banter about what was going on around them. That alone made most of the story pretty enjoyable for me.
I also like the references to mainstream zombie pop culture and the mix of fast and slow zombies, this added a fun level of fright, as you never knew what the survivors were going to run into whenever they saw some of the dead.
What I didn’t like about this story?
There was one area that I struggled with in the story and that was the human bad guys. There was a small conflict at their introduction and I’ll admit that since I was listening to the audiobook versus reading the book, I may have zoned out and missed something important. However, for me I just didn’t pick up on why there was such a heavy level of conflict between the characters. I get the overall premise of it, just for me there was something that was missing and the high level of angst between our survivors and the leader of the survivors they joined, just never quite felt right to me.
Conclusion:
All in all, despite the part where I didn’t quite understand what was going on between the main good guys and bad guys, I did enjoy the story and found myself rooting for them. Especially at the end when everything goes from bad to worse and you find yourself really starting to hate some of the characters and worrying about the others.
There’s enough good stuff here to give it a listen and then wait patiently for the sequel!