I won this book in a giveaway on LibraryThing and the publisher was nice enough to send me book 1 to read as well. I’m glad I had the first one to read, which helped set the story in my mind better. In book 2, the zombie plague is spreading and the ninjas are the only people equipped to stop it. Just like book 1, I enjoyed it. I’m always a sucker for a good zombie story.
Critiques: I’m going to give this a 4 star rating because I really did enjoy the story but I did have some content issues with it. In book 1, the main character is flirting a lot with a female colleague even though he has a wife at home. He is still flirting with her here, but there were some changes to the dynamic I was glad to see. One was that the wife noticed and actually spoke up about it for once. I’m glad she did. Although it didn’t seem to affect Ruby much at all. In fact, he seemed intrigued whenever he saw the two women together, almost like he was having a typical male fantasy and hoping to be able to have them both. It is this characteristic about the character that was a big drawback for me.
I was pleased to see that his wife had more of a character in this book than the first one. She apparently is a scientist in her own right, and a pretty good one. She leads a team in developing an antidote for the zombie venom, and thus ends up saving a lot of lives. She had no major role in the first book and I assumed she was a housewife only. I don’t know why it took a whole book to have her skills be brought to light.
Another content issue I had was that the media had imposed a blackout so as not to report this zombie problem to the rest of the world, but in this day and age I don’t know how something like that could ever be enforced. Too many people are carrying around cell phones and posting things on social media. Realistically, word would have spread and no media blackout would have stopped it.
Disclaimer: I received this book from LibraryThing for free in exchange for posting an honest review.