Just a few minutes ago, I finished a zombie novel set in Ireland. I was unfamiliar with the author, Eion Brady. However, since I’m currently writing a prequel to This Plague of Days that’s set in Ireland, I dove in. I’m so glad I did.

Weep has something in common with This Plague of Days, Season One. I loved that Mr. Brady takes us from normal living to the depths of the Irish epidemic of “weepers” in the first book of this series. As much as I loved 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead, both begin with a coma patient waking up to the zombie disaster. I realize conventional wisdom is to “come in late” and begin in media res. However, in showing how a society breaks down, there’s a lot of interesting territory to explore.

Mr. Brady leaves no stone unturned in regard to civilization’s collapse. Fin, the main character, is no superman. He’s got a regular job working at a hotel. Unfamiliar with weapons, he’s not in great shape, either. His journey is mostly an attempt to avoid trouble and get back to his family despite huge obstacles. Many books in this genre are simply killing sprees, less concerned with infection and more about emptying the business end of machine guns. The author is astute in hampering his protagonists. They’re unprepared so they have to improvise. Each narrow escape is well-earned.

There are lots of good ideas to deal with the apocalypse, too. What about evading detection with a ghillie suit? Or trashing the first floor of your safehouse and fortifying the attic? That way, other survivors will think all’s been looted so they pass you by? Other survivors can be just as deadly as the weepers.

As the dread builds, the author fleshes out his world with many savvy details. Mr. Brady has a fine eye for evocative descriptions. For instance, when the good guys are trapped in the upstairs of a house and the infected are coming, Fin notes the family pictures on the wall beside the stairs. Makes you think of your grandmother’s house, doesn’t it? Or possibly your own house. There’s some gore, but I didn’t find it particularly unrealistic or overdone. Whether it’s zombies in a thick fog or clumping along a riverbank, several scenes induce the claustrophobia of an intelligent horror movie.

I appreciate any author who contextualizes the fantastic with real-world experience. I try to do that in my own work. Suspension of disbelief is easy here because Brady doesn’t skip over the psychological devastation of enduring the horrors of the epidemic. The fear of infection and the measures taken to avoid contamination are particularly salient while reading this in my blanket fort during a global pandemic.

In short, read Weep. It’s a zombie novel with plenty of action. I’m not sure I can say it offers slivers of hope so much as it is a testament to the human condition. There is existential dread to which we can all relate, but the subtext is about the quest to help each other. We need that right now, don’t we?

Can Fin remain decent when human decency may be in short supply? I look forward to finding out in future books in this series.

Links:

Find Weep in the Amazon UK store here.

Amazon US

Amazon Canada

To learn more, here’s Eoin Brady’s Facebook profile.