I'm dog sitting at my sisters place in the middle of a trailer park today (at the time of writing), so I don't have my typical two screen set-up, hoping that won't affect much as I am instead using my blogging laptop and my iPhone instead. Life After: Zugzwang is the second in horror author Bryan Way's second trilogy of short stories/novellas set in his Life After world of zombie apocalypse. Where the first entry, Life After: The Maze could easily be taken and enjoyed as a stand alone tale, with this one it really only makes sense if you have read the mainline books, specifically Life After: The Void. Mild spoilers for that book to follow.
The main focus of The Void was zombie film expert Grey and his group of survivors attempt to head across country and meet up with some fellow survivors, in order to bring them back to the safety of their high school base. Zugzwang follows the survivors that Grey would later set out to rescue, giving glimpses into how their situation became untenable, and their ill-fated attempt to rescue Grey's brother from his campus apartment.
The first thing I did when coming to write this review was look up the meaning of the word 'zugzwang', the definition is as follows 'a situation in which the obligation to make a move in one's turn is a serious, often decisive, disadvantage', which seems to be in reference to Chess. That title really sums up the flow of the story that takes place here. With so many characters, and with some time passed since reading The Void it did take me a fair while to really get it straight in my head exactly when this took place, and who these characters were. It begins with Grey having already requested that they make an attempt to locate his brother who lives nearby to them. As a fan of the series it was great getting some outsider perspectives on Grey, with many of the group either not knowing who he is, or thinking he is a bit of a tool. It was also cool realising this took place slightly earlier in the apocalypse, a time when there is still a minimal police presence on the streets and where there seems to be plenty of random survivors going about their business.
The first half shows the already fracturing dynamics of the group, with various groups within the larger group who seem to actively dislike each other.
The main protagonist seems to be a girl named Dory, who due to having a close friendship with Grey's brother, is determined to seek him out, even if her majority rules decision making group decide against launching a rescue mission. The second half of the sixty page novella is the rescue attempt, where things become more entertaining, and where I finally figured out when this story likely took place.
As a stand alone zombie story I don't think this would be too easy to follow, but that really isn't the intention here. Instead, as a side story giving more details into the plot of The Void, this was pretty cool.
After getting over my initial confusion of just who all these characters were, I soon got into the plot. I still admit that I can't recall which of these characters made it to the events in The Void, but knowing that their mission to get Grey's brother likely wouldn't be successful kept me wanting to find out exactly what would happen. Life After: Zugzwang may not be an essential read if you are heading into it fresh, but if you're a fan of the main series this was a lovely little sidebar giving the world some more flavour.
SCORE:
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