Shana Festa's Time of Death: Induction was published by Permuted Press in May 2014.
Information about Shana Festa:
Shana Festa was born in Lincoln, Nebraska on October 17, 1976 and grew up in Northboro, Massachusetts. She currently lives in Cape Coral, Florida with her husband and two dogs, Daphne & Casey.
Shana is a registered nurse with clinical experience in mental health, geriatrics, HIV and substance abuse. In addition to her clinical background, Shana possesses over 15 years of experience with project management and data analytics.
She has been heavily involved in the collection and dissemination of the ICD-10 clinical and coding analytics across multiple projects including the NCHICA ICD-10 Pilot, the HIMSS WEDI ICD-10 Pilot and commercial testing programs.
Under her alter ego, The Bookie Monster, Shana reviews horror and paranormal books, with an emphasis on (but not limited to) zombie fiction. With a background in Psych Nursing, Shay brings her unique perspective to the online reading community.
Introducing her own zompoc story to the genre, Shana's debut novel, Time of Death, is the first in a planned trilogy.
Click here to visit the author's official website.
Infomation about Time of Death: Induction:
When no one or nowhere is safe, where do you go to escape the monsters?
In a few short days, 37 year old Emma Rossi's hard work will finally pay off. She will don her cap and gown and graduate with a degree in nursing, but not before she loses her first patient and is confronted with a new reality. In Cape Coral, Florida, a storm approaches. The dead are coming back to life.
And they're hungry.
Infection ravages the Eastern Seaboard with alarming speed while attempts to contain the spread of infection fail. Within days, a small pocket of panicked survivors are all that remain of civilization. Fighting to survive the zombie apocalypse alongside her husband Jake and their dog Daphne, Emma comes face-to-face with her worst nightmare.
Relying on snarky wit and sheer determination, she is forced to commit atrocious acts to protect her family and avoid joining the ranks of the undead.
Time of Death is author Shana Festa's full-length novel debut.
A REVIEW OF SHANA FESTA'S TIME OF DEATH: INDUCTION
Zombie fiction has become increasingly popular among speculative fiction readers and horror fans, and many zombie novels have been written and published during the last decade. Because many zombie novels have recently been published, it's nice to see such good and entertaining novels as Shana Festa's Time of Death: Induction appear on bookshelves.
Shana Festa's Time of Death: Induction was a positive surprise for me, because I found myself liking it. I don't normally read much zombie fiction, because I've been a bit disappointed with the quality of certain novels, so it was nice to read a good story for a change. When I began to read this novel I was drawn into the story by the author's fast-paced storytelling, characters and brutal happenings. It was good zombie entertainment.
Here's a bit of information about the story: This novel starts with an interesting prologue which describes how the zombie infection begins. Emma Rossi is a nurse student who lives in Florida. She has a husband, Jake, who's scared of all kinds of germs. They have a dog, Daphne, but they don't have any children. She lives pretty normal life, but the her life changes totally, when a heavy storm approaches and the zombie infection begins to spread. Emma, Jake and Daphne have to escape from their house...
The story is told from Emma's point of view. The first person narrative mode works in favour of the story, because it makes things more personal than third person narrative mode. The author concenctrates nicely on writing about what happens to Emma, her husband and her dog.
The main characters are three-dimensional, which is good, because they bring depth to the storyline. The characters in this novel could be your friends or your neighbours, because they're realistic and act in a realistic way. They're normal everyday people who are forced to fight against zombies and stay alive by all means necessary. The lesser characters aren't as three-dimensional as the main characters, but that didn't bother me much.
Emma is an interesting protagonist, because she's a woman who finds herself in a difficult situation when the zombie outbreak occurs. Shana Festa writes well about how Emma's life changes and what she has to do to survive. The world where the living dead prey on people is ruthless and Emma must be tough or she'll die. She's a caring person, but she's also strong and capable of doing what she must to survive.
The author creates a believable and realistic vision of the Emma's life, family, friends and neighbours. Her descriptions are wonderfully fluent and spot-on, and she's also capable of adding a bit of humour to her descriptions when needed. It was nice to read how Emma interacted with other survivors, because the author wrote well about it.
Shana Festa's descriptions of the nurse work feel accurate. Because she's a nurse herself, she has been able to provide accurate details of many things connected to nurse work. She doesn't glorify nursing, but she also doesn't belittle it. This kind of approach to nursing adds plenty of realism to the storyline.
In my opinion this zombie novel is interesting because of its fast-paced story and well created characters. One of the best things about this novel is that the characters feel joy, sadness and fear just like real persons. The author doesn't dwell too much on the characters' suffering, misery and losses, but describes their feelings in a realistic way.
It's great that the author is capable of delivering surprises to her readers. I've always considered surprises to be an important part of well written zombie fiction, because otherwise stories and novels would be quite predictable and boring.
I have to mention that I found it interesting that Shana Festa wrote touchingly about Emma's love for her dog, Daphne (Daphne is important to Emma and she's part of her family). This is seldom seen in zombie fiction. I'm sure that all animal lovers will enjoy reading about Emma's love for her dog.
When I read this novel, I thought to myself that Shana Festa clearly loves zombie fiction and zombie movies. She has added many well-known zombie elements to her story and she succeeds in using them in a good, shocking and entertaining way. I'm not sure if the author has seen and been influenced by the remake of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (directed by Zack Snyder, 2004) in which Sarah Polley plays a nurse called Ana, but I think it's possible, because everybody who has seen this remake will most likely think of Ana when they read about Emma.
Time of Death: Induction is the first novel in a planned trilogy. The second novel, Time of Death: Asylum is forthcoming. Because I enjoyed reading this novel, I look forward to reading the second novel, because it'll be interesting to see what happens next.
Time of Death: Induction is a delightfully gory, brutal and ruthless vision of a zombie-infested world. It's a good old-fashioned yet modern zombie romp that delivers the goods on all fronts. I think that fans of zombie fiction and zombie films will be delighted to read this novel, because it's a promising and fast-paced novel that will appeal to zombie fans.
My final words are: This novel is good and well written zombie fiction!