Reviewed by Vicki
TITLE: Love is for the Living
SERIES: Albion Rising #1
AUTHOR: Nicholas Kinsley
PUBLISHER: Fantastic Fiction Publishing
LENGTH: 246 pages
BLURB:
Novel (80,000 words)
Genres: Gay Romance Horror/Adventure
The zombies have arrived, and Blaine needs to escape. He’d always thought of his London neighborhood as a place of safety, but then his infected neighbors tried to eat him. Blaine packed a bag and fled through growing numbers of shambling, voracious monsters–people, he had to remind himself, they’re people–toward his family in Bristol. He would surely have died without the turn of luck that brought him Commander Andrew Peterson. Together, they face the horrors and adversities of the apocalypse, trying to protect their loved ones, and—if they’re lucky—find love for themselves. (M/M – See publisher’s website for content labels.)
REVIEW:
This story starts with a bang, as Blaine, one of our main characters, wakes up to a changed world. Pretty typical zombie apocalypse stuff, some sort of virus has caused an outbreak of disease, killing people and turning them in to flesh-eating monsters. Blaine and his roommate Paul, make a run for Paul’s girlfriends home, dodging survivors and zombies. They arrive at Emily’s, and Blaine is the only one to leave. He heads out for his mothers home in Bristol. Blaine is nineteen years old, and is pretty mild and clueless. It’s a miracle he isn’t eaten immediately. He manages to get out of London, and stops for gas at a station off the highway. Where he meets Merrick, a former military man, sniper, and now grumpy old guy. Merrick convinces Blaine to stay with him and learn how to survive. Blaine stays, and time passes…..
While this is happening, we pop over to meet Andrew, our other main character. Andrew is a Marine (British, not US), just returning from a tour at sea. He reunites with Luke, his best friend, for an evening of sex, before they get pulled in to the shit storm hitting the world. They are separated, and Andrew is promoted to Commander of the base he’s at. He is given the horrific task of defending the base from everyone, dead or alive. He has one last encounter with Luke, before heading off to Oxford to look for his missing sister.
Blaine leaves Merrick to find his mother, and meets Andrew, going to find his sister. Sixty days have passed by now. Finally we have our two heros together. I’ll be careful with spoilers for the rest, and just say they end up on a house full of people, trying to stay alive.
So this is obviously an unrealistic story, it has zombies in it, I get that. But I do need to accept a story to enjoy it. I can accept a whole lot, if the author really sells it to me. I couldn’t do that with this book. I spent the whole book questioning things. Why did so much time pass? Why did Merrick take in Blaine? What did they eat? Why did they not see any other people? Why did Blaine wait so long to go look for his mother? Why did Andrew wait so long to go look for his sister? Once we get this whole house full of people, I continued with my questions. How are they getting water? Why aren’t there more zombies? What is their long term plan? Where are they getting ammunition? Why aren’t there more alive people? There seems to be common names for the zombies, but who came up with those names? How did they all know them? I will say Nicholas mentions tampons, and I have wondered how women deal with personal issues in an apocalypse, to big point for that! But I couldn’t get my brain to shut up. Way too much time watching The Walking Dead to easily accept this story. Not to mention the fantastic zombie book I read a couple months ago, that I couldn’t help comparing this one against, which isn’t fair to this author, but I couldn’t help it.
I can get past a plot that I don’t like if I really love the characters and their connection. But that didn’t work for me in this book either. I didn’t feel any attraction or connection between the two men. Even when they finally have sex, it was just sex, and Andrew didn’t seem to even want to be there. I liked Blaine, and could have liked Andrew, but just never did. Then there are all the other people in the house. I didn’t care if they lived or died to be honest.
So I was disappointed with this book. Not enough action, way too much down time, way too many unanswered questions, not enough sex, and I didn’t feel the connection between the main characters. It was like an episode of TWD when nothing interesting happens, and I want to fast forward to the next episode. I can see that the author knows how to write, techincally the book was well done. The dialogue flowed, there were no obvious editing issues, things like that. It was the plot and the characters I had trouble with. I really did want to like it, it has everything I like in a zombie apocalypse book, but it was a miss for me.
RATING: 
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