Horde by Bryan Cassiday

Horde Reviews

• 
  Veronica F

  It's your typical zombie novel... lots of brain bashing, fetid chunks of rotting flesh, arguments amongst the living and how to handle the zombies... This is not something I would have picked out, I found the giveaway section and entered. Won it. If you like zombie books, it's good. At least it kept me entertained through out the whole book, but if you're not into zombie books then I'm not even sure why you are reading this review.
• 
  Reader Views

  “Horde” is the sixth book in the Chad Halverson Zombie Apocalypse series. Ironically, the zombies were created by a plague that began in China. The first book in the series was written in 2011. The timing of reading this novel, during a pandemic, was perfect.
  
  In this sixth episode, the story begins with the protagonist having no memory of how he ended up alone in a desert, or any recollection about who he is. Two men help rescue him and take him back to a compound where they reside with a ragtag group. Naming him “Box,” it quickly becomes apparent that he has had some elite military training and it is well ingrained into his psyche. The residents of the compound are not receptive to Box being there. They fear he might be a carrier for the plague. When the compound is taken by force, things get even more precarious for Box and several others who have aligned themselves with him. The new leader is demented and cruel, and he doesn’t trust Box or his friends. The residents of the compound soon show that they are weak willed and will do anything to show support to their new leader. This means putting Box’s group in danger. They have to fight both the new regime and the zombie attacks in order to survive. When Box remembers who he is, which is Chad Halverson, he also remembers that he needs to resume his mission in hopes of saving the country.
  
  “Horde,” moves quickly. Readers will get so caught up in the story, they will have to remember to breathe! This is the first book that I read in this series and I was very impressed. While I suspect readers will enjoy reading the books in order of the series, it is actually not necessary to do so, because it stands well on its own. If I had read the previous books in the series, I would have known the identity of the protagonist, and what he had already gone through, but again, not necessary. I enjoyed discovering who he was, as the character himself regained his memories.
  
  While I love a good zombie apocalypse with a lot of blood and guts, such as this one, I also enjoyed watching how sociological aspects of the story affected how the residents of the compound treated the protagonist and his group. I felt that the desperate struggle to survive had them easily following a leader who made them act in ways in which they wouldn’t have in normal circumstances. This would be a brilliant book for a sociology student to read!
  
  It was also interesting to read this while being in lock down because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It kind of made me grateful that our symptoms usually aren’t as bad as the plague in this series, but the horror aspects of the story also made me a bit fearful about what our future holds. Yes, I know it was fiction, but I have an imagination that tends to wander and wonder. Fans of zombie apocalypse adventures will really enjoy “Horde.”
• 
  Melissa Levine

  DNR
  
  I wasn’t able to get very far into this story for many reasons. I have come to realize once I hit a certain point in my notetaking, it’s usually time for me to stop. That’s what happened here.
  
  I couldn't stand Danny. He annoyed me to no end with his comments about Box. Whether he was a zombie or if he was involved with the people who set off the mortar, even though none of them knew who fired it. On a side note, you're given the task to name someone and you go with Box. Why?
  
  There was so much repetition/redundancy - stating things that were common sense or should have been common sense. It seemed to focus on nouns. It was hard for me to believe this wasn’t the author’s first book. For example: Danny: “Do you have any bites on YOUR BODY?”
  Woman: “No.”
  Danny: “We need to inspect YOUR BODY.”
  Or “The camp turned out to be a WAREHOUSE… A chain-link fence encompassed the WAREHOUSE.”
  Or there were buildings that were covered in graffiti THAT WAS SCRAWLED ON THEM.” (A perfect example of redundancy. What does graffiti mean? Where else would the graffiti be?)
  
  The narrator annoyed me. I was very annoyed overall, I guess. When he spoke normally/naturally, he was fine. But the voice he did for the narration and Porter's voice was an I'm-trying-to-sound-tough voice or the voice of a detective from the fifties or even... Batman. It was just too unnatural sounding, dragging out words that didn’t need to be. I’ve said this many times in reviews: A narrator can make or break a story. In this case, he added nothing to it.
  
  Comments/Questions:
  
  There were way too many simple (no action) dialogue tags. When there are only two characters talking, there is no need to constantly go with "Porter said... Danny said" every time one of them spoke. There was also too much repetitiveness between Porter and Danny about what they thought was going on with Box, the PTSD, him being a zombie or whatever.
  
  The conversation between Porter and Danny with the "wino" was too long. It just dragged with the repetitive "he's not one of them" or something along that line. A similar conversation took place after they got back to the campsite too.
  
  At the beginning, when Box went to stand, it said his legs "were stiff and sore." Given this part of the story was not being told in Box's POV, ie only Box would know his legs were sore, this was a mess-up. After this, I realized the POV changed a lot between Box and Porter within the same scene which was a no-no. You want to stick to one POV per scene unless the story is plot-driven. Whereas I believe this one is character-driven. One time the POV went to the rats that had been eating the horse. Then it changed to the lady’s POV after she decided to go with them.
  
  At one point, Box was wracking his “brains.” And he did this several times.
  
  Besides the above complaints regarding poor writing, there was this: “Porter fired the Taurus engine. He stepped on the gas and drove straight at the mob of ghouls. … Reaching sixty miles an hour with the Taurus, Porter ran into the throng of plotting corpses. His plan was to plow through the wall of living corpses. [First off, unless they’re suddenly in a different vehicle, there’s no need to mention them being in a Taurus again, so soon after it’s first revealed to the reader. The reader should assume they’re still in that same Taurus. Second, “Porter ran into the corpses” is sufficient. Redundancy took over with the next line: “His plan was to plow through the wall of living corpses.” Obviously, that was why he ran through them.
  
  Or there was this scene when they were in the car and zombies were too close. It was essentially written as Danny put up his window. Porter put up his window. Box put up his window.
  The reader was told “the president nuked cities to kill the zombies [Should have ended it there] from spreading the plague.” Why else would he have nuked the cities? Zombies are all the same. They spread all over the world, killing people and turning them into zombies.
  
  Here we go with the repeated conversations again. This time it was between Porter and the three-person gang whose car was blocking their way. “They were trying (or wanted) to jack our car.”
  
  The horse appeared from the woods. There was a zombie hanging onto its stomach. The stomach was ripped open with organs spilling out, yet it was still on its feet. Oh, and to add more details to the scene of this one “character,” there were also rats trying to eat the entrails. I felt this was overdone.
  
  “Everything’s going to pot,” the lady said. If the zombies have been around ten years, wouldn’t that have happened years prior? Or her commenting that the gas stations were out of gas. The doc said: “It’s only “teetering” on the brink of chaos”? Keep in mind this is the first book I’ve listened to/read by this author so I don’t know any of the backstory.
  
  How did they know the zombies have spores? Or that people could be asymptomatic if there was no proof that’s possible? They didn’t. Yet they kept talking about both. Why?
  
  After ten years, they still have lots of bandages, enough to waste on little boo-boos?
  The lady (whose name, for the life of me, I can’t remember) described how her sister died. “The ghouls bathed in blood, humming in ecstasy.” Right… Again, I felt the details were overdone here. I did find it interesting that Porter and the woman both described their loved ones being killed in such detail.
  
  The woman asked: If Box wasn’t a psychiatrist, how could he know about Stockholm Syndrome? What year was the story taking place in? I’d imagine a high percentage of people know what it means.
  
  “Box knew he was out of shape”… every time he was about to start a new exercise.
  
  The campsite’s people needed drugs “otherwise they’ll revolt.” Why not just leave then? Go on your own path? But, speaking of drugs… there was a cartel still around? With hitmen?
  
  
  I received a free audiobook code in exchange for a review.
• 
  The Book Hermit

  I won this book in the Goodreads Giveaway drawing. This is the 2nd book by this author that I read. I like his zombie stories. The book had alot of drama between characters and it was a plus to the story, but the action was a little less than I would have wanted. The main character "Box" has a problem with remebering the past and at the end of the book, it seemed as though he was givin some of his past memories back. It did not make sence to me. Just my opinion. The next character "Zodiac" was a true evil that the story needed. My favorite part of the book was when Zodiac ordered live people to be thrown from a caperpult into a crowd of zombies. I felt it was original and funny. If you read fast, then you can probably finish this book in one setting. A good story, just a few areas that could have been better.
• 
  Stephen

  Wobbly
  
  This one turned into a tough one for me. It started off well with a good storyline. Some of the details seemed a little heavy in places but it wasn't bad. As the story progressed it did okay till maybe a little more than halfway through where it started to just feel like it was disseminating. It really felt like it went from being a zombie story to a government / military thing. Almost like the story couldn't make up its mind. Towards the very end there was an overload of details describing some of the zombies that just really felt like it was more filler than story. I have not read the first five books in this series as I didn't realize there were others when I got this one. I gave it three stars because it started well and I was able to finish the story. I'm just left a bit unfulfilled at the end. I am curious how the first five books went though.
• 
  Linda

  O. M. G. What a time to be ALIVE! I so enjoyed Horde, book 6 that I could hardly put it down! American was overrun by an the Zombie apocalypse that almost two third of it's population were turned into zombies and the president sent a nuke toward the west in hopes of killing the zombies, but communications were down and he couldn't raised anyone from his secure underground bunker, but somehow millions of zombies had climbed in the the air ducts for a way to get in a feast on their flesh that they had blocked any air from getting in. WHAT A HORRIBLE TIME TO BE ALIVE. I did not read the prior books of the series, but WOW, did this author entertained me!
• 
  Bree Maack

  Was okay, took me a long time to finiah
• 
  M.vanessa

  love this series
  
  Constant action throughout the book. Keeps you in suspense the main character is my favorite part of the story. I recommend reading this book