OK, to bring you up to date. The author asked if I would like to read the first book in a series he published. The synopsis sounded good and I committed. Before I could find time to read it, I discovered a prequel called, Golgotha, which I bought and read and downright loved. 5 Stars.
Next, I discovered there were a total of 8 episodes now available in The Season One Omnibus of S. W. Tanpepper's Gameland, so I bought that for a very reasonable price and set about reading Episode 1: Deep Into the Game.
I'm really enjoying the story, but at this stage, I though it should have had better proofreading. Especially since this is now a published series and not just an Advance Readers Copy.
Example: "...I can see that he's only trying scaring her into remembering." Maybe "trying to scare her into remembering" would have been better. Then there's "What would a zombie o after reanimating underwater?" I'm sure the "o" should be "do". There were several of these kinds of errors. Thus, a 4 star instead of a 5 star review.
In the prequel novella, Golgotha, we learned how the Government found a way of reanimating the dead, creating what were initially called Zulus and later discovering how they could put them under computer control using L.I.N.C.s (Latent Individualized, Neuroleptic Connections), thus creating zombie fighters they could control, known as the Omegaman Forces.
In Gameland, it's 15 years later and between climate change and periodic zombie outbreaks, times are definitely changed. Consider the Life Service Law, Now everyone is legally considered government property after death. You die, you become Undead and you serve the government in some capacity until your time of servitude is ended. Then there's Gameland, Long Island is cut off completely, "after the second flood, the Army Corps of Engineers went in and walled it off and evacuated the people still alive." Later Arc Properties converted one of the zones into a new type of gaming arcade, which they called Gameland. Then they imported a new crop of Zombies as Players. It costs more than a million bucks to buy into the game.
A group of 6 teenage hackers with more spunk than brains decide it might be fun to see if they can get onto Long Island and check it out. S. W. Tanpepper is very good with dialog, I found the banter between the characters to be comfortable and convincing. The story is fast-paced and despite the subject matter, very believable.
Episode 1: Deep Into the Game, ends with a cliff-hanger and I want to dive right back in to Episode 2: Failsafe, and after a few few quick reads of other works that I've committed myself to read, that's just what I plan on doing.
If you can get past a few grammatical/sentence structure errors, this one is a lot of fun.
Available in a variety of e-book formats as well as paperback. If you think you'll like these books, get the prequel and the omnibus will save a you a few bucks.
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