Monday, 27 October 2014

Kaiju Apocalypse by Eric S. Brown & Jason Cordova




It’s a B-rate “movie” read at its best, but it is a fun, fast read if all you want is monsters, weapons and YaHoo/Gung Ho for humanity!

As a virgin of Creature Feature books I really enjoyed the fantastic description of the beasts. Rapid and hungry for human flesh. Smaller “dogs” and huge “mothers”.   I think another review calls it “Pacific Rim meets Starship Troopers”!! and yes that’s exactly what it is.

The opening lines were brilliant and I found Commander Jorgs death to be amazing in its grossness! And it just goes on from there really.

The history of how the Earth fell and how the Kaiju rose is told succinctly within a few lines.  The premise is that Pacifica Base has fallen leaving just one strong hold of humanity left. The last remaining Governor and Minister of War set about trying to find the possibly mythical OverMind, alleged to be the hive mind of the Kaiju.

With his superdooper new “DogKiller” (that’s the little kaiju!) amour, which has some splendidly fun weapons and abilities Ryan West sets out with his battalion to find this place and destroy it.

Basically just monsters wreaking havoc, and humans trying to fight back! There is no character growth or development but they do have humour and as most people die anyway and it races through the story you don’t have time to get to know them!  Which is a shame really as I thought the book could have been extensively extended and more emphasis put on the characters, their relationships and back history and then maybe I would have routed for them more than the Kaiju!

Very militarized in some of its prose yet easily accessible as well described and not laden down with technicalities. It is a bit gung ho and “into battle we ride” type fodder too but that goes along with the story really well.

There are some really obvious grammar and spelling errors, especially from the middle to the end of the story, and a good editor/beta reader would have picked these up – just because its B rate doesn’t mean it should be published in that state.


Overall I did enjoy the read, it was an afternoon of fun, but it is left open for a sequel I just think the authors should clean this one up, even extend it a little and then maybe it would make a great series.



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