Aftermath (The Remaining) [MP3 CD]

This was a great book! It is at least as good as the first one. I have to admit, when I ran across the original e-book, I was a little leery about a $2.99 novel, especially in a genre that is as hit-or-miss as horror. If you are on the fence about buying either the first or second The Remaining e-books, do not hesitate, buy them.

I usually find it beneficial when considering the merits of a review to know a little bit about the tastes of the reviewer. As far as authors go, my tastes tend to run towards Stephen King, Clive Barker, Tim Curran, and Joe McKinney. The Remaining: Aftermath easily surpasses McKinney for exposition and it surpasses Tim Curran for pacing. While it does not have King's eeriness, or Barker's flare for making the grotesque seem poetically beautiful, it does keep the reader turning the pages from beginning to end.
It is always a pleasant surprise for me when an author takes the time to research the equipment and weapons used by the characters. I am pleased to say that Mr. Molles continues to excel in this area in The Remaining: Aftermath, just he did the original book. I realize most (or at least, some) readers could not care less about things like that, but it ruins my suspension of disbelief when the author bungles technical details. It makes me think the author was too lazy to do the research. This was clearly not the case with Mr. Molles.

As far as the story, it picks up right where the first e-book ended, and flows along at a logical and steady pace. There is a good balance of action and horror, and the characters seem to behave in what I would imagine would be realistic ways, given their circumstances and environment. There were a couple of characters who seemed to be cannon fodder, but it is a survival horror story, so you have to kind of expect that.
All-in-all, if you read and enjoyed the first book, you will probably enjoy the second. I would have paid three times what I paid for it and still felt like I got my money's worth.

Highly recommended. Infected are viewed as sick people not necessarily evil. Strong emphasis on the development of relationships in a time of transition and stress. Quite unique for a dystopian story. Very well done. Looking forward to book three.

I enjoyed the first book enough to pick up the second, but had a few problems with it. I should have realized that the biggest problem I had with the first book would ruin my day in the second.

* * * SPOILERS * * *

In the first book, it seems like we get a brief "oops I'm sorry" moment and some "oh I'm so angry," and then the fact that Lee's home and bunker have been destroyed fades into the background. Really? I would be pretty upset if my house burned down, and especially if some kid I just met was the cause, and even MORE especially if my bunker was kind of important to my survival.

It's okay, though. We'll just shrug it off and move on. Oh and we won't actually dig around to see if there's anything we can salvage from the house or the bunker, even though the bunker is underground and had a bunch of protection to it. It's not like we're starving and dying of thirst!

But as I said, the rest of the first book carried me along and I was curious to see what came of the second book.

Surely Lee's decisionmaking would get better?

No. It wouldn't.

We got the supplies! We had to leave some folks behind, but we left them with supplies, too, and a means of finding our camp (even though we didn't clear this with the leader of the camp)! What should we do now? Well we should definitely NOT go right back to camp with these super important supplies. No, we should all get involved in searching a town for some relatives of a person back at camp. We can just leave this truck full of precious supplies here at random. What could possibly happen to it? I'm going to leave it with the guy I've been suspicious of for awhile now, the one that I make sure is always described as looking like he is hiding something. Oh and I'll also leave the guy who's had like one line of description, to the point he's like the no-name ensign on Star Trek.

Have I mentioned "camp" is now down to a little bit of rice and some beans left? That they just had a deadly perimeter breach, and could probably use the weapons in the truck?

This would not even be possible for me to forgive of a regular old citizen. It's just THAT stupid. Here I am expected to believe that a soldier tasked with restarting society doesn't have the brains to realize that he could take all the supplies back to camp and, having established a whole lot of good faith by doing this, recruit people to run back out to Smithfield with him. They would have had enough gas to get back to pileups and the car lot.

Instead of being afraid of the infected, I found myself way more afraid of what boneheaded move Lee was going to undertake next. That's not a good sign.

Great book, if you're into post apocolyptic fiction you should give it a whirl. Cant wait to read aboout the captains adventures in book 3!

I try to read as many zombie/end of it books as possible, and get tired of references to things like loading another 'Clip' into the gun. This author actually seems to know what he's talking about when referencing weapons and gear. Either he's military trained, or at least looked things up before writing them down.
The character development was nicely done as well. I'm looking forward to the next book in the series.