Guest Review: The Dead Ways by Christopher Edge

Today my fiancé talks about The Dead Ways by Christopher Edge.

About the book

The Dead Ways by Christopher Edge is the first in a series of the same name. It is 191 pages long and was published on 1 October 2011.

Synopsis

Ghostly apparitions on abandoned motorways...corpses escaping from hospital morgues...sketons crawling out of their graves...THE DEAD WAYS ARE OPENING. 

The Government has a plan to clean up the environment - closing down motorways and returning the roads to nature. When Scott Williams' Dad is found dead in his government office, Scott resolves to find out the truth behind his death. What he discovers is a far reaching and sinister conspiracy to open ancient lines of power sealing this world from the next.  As the roads close, the dead will wake. Soon Scott is thrust headlong into a deadly race against time. It'll be the end of the world if he loses.

What I thought

Hmmm Zombies...like Vampires and Werewolves...like teenagers with smartphones...they're every bloody where. I therefore wasn't completely convinced when picking up this book that I would enjoy it as I thought it was more of 'that sort of thing' and not really sure if it would be mine.

The good news is that I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The bad news is that I don't think I care enough to bother with reading any more in the series.

I picked this book up from my wonderful fiance's reading shelves because (a) I needed something to read on the train and (b) because the cover looked quite cool.

Scott Williams is the son of a civil servant. His Dad is seemingly involved in a Government Green scheme to help the environment by replacing motorways with efficient high speed trains (this is in England - how far fetched is this?!) to allow nature to reclaim the land that we have built roads on. Of course it's a front for something more sinister...namely the opening of The Dead Ways - ancient lines in the Earth that keep our world apart from the next...queue creepy ghosts, the recently dead rising, skeltons crawling out of their graves...all that good stuff.

The pace is blistering from the first page to the last. The prologue kicks it all off and it is pretty unrelenting all the way through. Some of the creepy scenes are a little creepy but there is no intestine eating going on here - probably because of the target audience - shame.

I enjoyed Scott as a character. He is courageous, rebellious, resourceful. He is likeable and easy to root for as he tries to find out exactly what his Dad was involved in and why he died...often dealing with threats to his own life and hardly anyone to turn to for help. Detective Jason becomes involved, a cynical sort, unwilling to believe the evidence of his own eyes but driven to do the right thing, especially by Scott. They make a good team.

I did enjoy it from start to finish but I'm not sure I care enough about what happens next - at least not enough to actively seek the next one when it comes out. If someone hands it to me and I have a few hours to spare I'd probably read it (and probably enjoy it) but I won't go looking for it otherwise.