The Remaining: Faith: A Novella

The book was "okay". It was entertaining enough for me to want to finish, but I don't know that I'm itching to read the next book in the series, despite the fact that it ends in a cliffhanger. I'll keep this series in the back of my mind if I need a handful of quick reads for a plane ride or something.

Captain Lee Harden is waiting in a bunker with his faithful dog, not for the first time. Usually, he waits for a few weeks or so, receives a call and goes on with his life. This time, the call doesn't come. He figures it might be a mistake, so he waits and still nothing. Finally, he watches the required video that tells him of a pandemic of epic proportions. His mission is to save who he can, restore order, and basically restart civilization, a tall order for one person. Fortunately, there are other people in bunkers across the US as a contigency with the same commands, but can they combat the diseased and unhinged people with any success?

Lee Harden is ex-military and without family. He figures his special assignment is nice for extra money worth going a little stir crazy every once in a while. When the time comes when his contact can no longer respond, he goes through a period of denial. Lee opts to drink and play video games to cope with the knowledge that something horrible wrong happened to the world. Once he pulls himself together, he breaks protocal to investigate his house, leaving his bunker earlier than planned. He encounters both diseased people and deranged humans. At first, he sees the infected as needing a doctor instead of a bullet in the head, but he has to protect himself from their attacks. He has much less sympathy for people taking advantage of lawlessness by shooting the innocent for fun. His decisions may to always be right, but he tries his hardest to make moral decisions, save those who need help, and punish the ones doing harm.

The zombies in the story are caused by a bacteria called FURY, the cause of major plagues throughout human history. The disease goes through 4 stages. First, asymtomatic stage can last 24 to 48 hours and be very contagious. Second, the prodromal stage is marked by fever, salivation, extreme hunger and thirst, insomnia, and loss of fine motor skills. Next, the illness stage holds loss of speech and cognition, hallucinations, loss of sensation, hyperaggression, uncontrollable screaming and yelling, and insatiable appetite. The late illness stage lowers reaction time, unsteadies the gait, and may lead to blindness. The disease essentially eats the inessential parts of the brain so only the aggression, hunger, and thirst are left of the person. Some can still speak, but usually repeat words over and over while attacking unpredictably. These are closer to the 28 Days Later rage zombies and I'm curious to see if these ones will deteriorate over time in later books.

The Remaining is an exciting book that really takes off when he leaves the bunker. It took a little too long to get there and in the dragging parts, I thought of ways to rephrase some sentences to make them sound better. The infodump of the zombie disease was a little jumbled for me, but once the action commenced, the writing improved. Other than these minor problems, I am eager to continue the series. So far, there are 6 books and I want to know what happens, how larger swaths of the US are handling the disease, and how time affects the zombies.

The Remaining is a great zombie book. Originally self-published in 2012, it quickly became an internet bestseller before being picked up by Orbit, and there’s a damn good reason for that. By now you’ve probably seen a lot of the positive reviews it has garnered, though I’m willing to bet few of them have praised this story for being terribly original. But does that make this a bad book? Heck no. In fact, I would argue that its devotion to the classic zombie survival-horror tradition is a massive part of the appeal.

The Walking Dead fans, this one would be right up your alley. No joke. The “zombies” in this book might not be the traditional mindless shambling hordes we’re used to seeing – the victims of the FURY plague are still capable of talking and strategizing up to a point before the virus degrades their brains (which makes them even more terrifying, if you ask me) – but the overall spirit and style of the narrative is still the same. It’s not out to knock you off your feet with any new or unusual or experimental ideas, but if its goal is to provide a fast-moving, action-packed and entertaining zombie story then I must say it has succeeded rather swimmingly.

Here’s what you basically need to know: the main character of The Remaining is a US Army captain named Lee Harden, who as part of a secret government program is sequestered in his bunker after the sudden outbreak of a new deadly and infectious virus. It’s not the first time this has happened. Lee and about four dozen other soldiers like him (one for every state) are placed in their bunkers every time the country experiences an emergency of national crisis. If the government falls, their job is to come out after the bunker, take stock of the situation and try to gather survivors in order to rebuild. But things in the past have never gone so far or gotten this bad before. When the lockdown period passes without an all-clear or any further instructions from his superiors, Lee emerges from the bunker and prepares to begin his mission.

As a character, Lee took a while to grow on me – but the important thing is that he did, and I think the moment came when I was finally able to appreciate his faults. Admittedly, the few chapters really tried my patience; that whole period in lockdown pretty much featured Lee being in denial and going back and forth between his decisions and second guessing his instructions. And man, those long and wearying paragraphs about his guns! As the deadline came and went I kept tapping my foot waiting for him to stop describing the contents of his impressive arsenal, get his waffling butt out there and actually put all that stuff to good use on some hapless Infected.

Then I realized I was probably being too harsh on him. Dude is stuck in a bunker. Not knowing what’s going on because he’s cut off from all communication. No human interaction at all because it’s just him and his dog. If the world outside has indeed gone to hell in a hand basket, he’s probably also scared to death of the responsibility waiting for him on the other side of that tunnel. So maybe I was being a tad unfair to poor Lee. And really, what a shame it would have been if he was just another archetypal action hero, full of empty bravado rushing out headfirst to save the world. Lee is more realistic this way, even though if he does end up doing some pretty dumb things. But who wouldn’t make some wrong choices in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, right? Amidst his questionable decisions, he makes some pretty brutal ones as well. The guy has a good heart, but is sure as hell also capable of showing no mercy to those who don’t deserve it. I love that.

Bottom line, if you’re a fan of type of zombie apocalypse survival movies that Hollywood does so well, this is that in book form. After a relatively sedate start, the novel picks up and will not slow down, with always some kind of disaster or new setback waiting around the corner for the characters to overcome. No other bells and whistles or fancy-schmancy embellishments, just pure zombie fiction fun.

Unlike most of the other reviewers of this book, I think the concept is over-used, the writing is puerile, the reading is excessively excitable, it is full of discontinuities and the editing was non-existent. Other than that, it kept me awake and interested while driving long distances. I will listen to the rest of the saga.

Good take on the zombie apocalypse. The Remaining series follows a soldier tasked with rebuilding civilization after a catastrophic event. I was a little worried before starting that it was going to be a military action book more than a survivors tale of the zombie apocalypse, but I was pleasantly surprised. When I read ZA books, I'm not interested in blood and gore or really gross zombie encounters and I'm not interested in hearing about main characters that are bad ass and overnight learn how to kill anything that gets in their way while leading hundreds of people to safety single handedly. I prefer realistic tales (as realistic as ZA novels can be) with groups of people who are trying to survivor after a world altering event when they have no idea how to get by in the new world and must learn day by day. This series is right up my alley.

It has plenty of characters that are easy to become invested in and it has aggravating situations that crop up that are intense while not being outrageous. The focus of the story isn't blood and gore or military style action, but the survivors and their daily struggles to make it through to the next sunrise. If ZA is your thing because of the tales of survivors, this is a good series to sink your teeth into.

Excellent novel. Turned out much better than I thought it would. Was afraid this was just another post-apocalyptical zombie story. While it does contain these elements, the focus is more about survival, who to trust, who not to trust; and the adventure that goes with it. While the story does end abruptly, I'm certain it will continue in the sequel, "The Remaining: Aftermath" to which I look forward to reading. Kudos to D.J. Molles for writing such a fine novel.

A frightfully entertaining post-apocalyptic "zombies versus survivors" scenario that's a continuous stream of action from start to finish. Nothing too difficult to digest, nothing too predictable, with just the right amount of military backdrop to keep it interesting. This is by no means Pulitzer prize award winning writing, but it is damn good fun and completely worth the price of admission.

Captain Harden is holed up in bunker, as happens when the end of the world is coming. He usually gets to to come out after a few days when international diplomacy works. This time he is forced into his mission.

A plague has taken hold, killing millions and turning the rest into mindless psychopaths. A zombie survival book that doesn't use the word zombie.

It's a page turner, with quick action and the question of morality and mortality you would expect in a good zombie novel.

The biggest downside is that this book is part of a series, so don't expect a meaningful resolution by the last page.