Review for The City Grew Monsters by Hunter Adams

Looking back, I am not sure if The City Grew Monsters uses the “z-word” even once in the actual novel. In most works, the characters pretty quickly start bandying it about when random people begin biting each other and adding to the hoard. The cardinal rules are quickly adapted to as well, such as going for the head! Thus, I found this title fresher in that respect, especially when it leads to a doctor narrowing down what works and doesn’t work on one of the “infected.”

Action is where this novel shines. Adrenaline soaring, feet pounding on the pavement, and a much faster version than the usual shambling, decaying villains we usually get in works like these. Descriptive details and inner monologue capture just the right amount of tension and urgency. Even in the fastest scenes, I could visualize what was happening.

Hunter Adams doesn’t just rely on human vs. zombie as the only source of conflict though. The stakes start high even before the outbreak and only get higher. What could be worse than being trapped in a high rise building as the city descends into chaos around you? Being 6 years old and there illegally. Oh, and your father, the only person to know you are there, has a medical condition that makes both of your survivals questionable. For the sake of not spoiling anything, I won’t describe the other layers of conflict. Just know there are many more.

The City Grew Monsters reminds me of a geode. Rough on the outside, but you can crack it open to find a treasure inside. The plot and characters in the novel are honestly quite good. But the packaging surrounding them, the presentation of it all, lends to a lower rating. A lack of consistency makes the timeline of events hard to understand sometimes. This becomes crucial when more and more moving parts pile on, including multiple points of view.

Flashbacks and time skips (usually because of a character sleeping) had to be reread because of little transition. The sleeping annoyed me most, since it was largely used to create cliffhangers. Leave a character at the end of one chapter only to pick back up hours later. Instead of just continuing from that point, we’d then have a flashback to what happened. This artificially created some confusion while also dropping the tension from the previous chapter. That we could have several chapters between the different point of view characters only made this worse.

Every chapter starts with a timestamp, and some with an additional “Day [x]” format. Here too, there wasn’t a lot of consistency with which day or how far past the beginning (and the day 0 prologue) we were. Some flashbacks also contradict what earlier parts of the novel establish. There are quite a few errors too, mostly missing words or the wrong word being used.

Despite some issues with presentation, I do still recommend The City Grew Monsters to any fans of the zombie genre or even fans of just thrillers in general. A fresh perspective on what can sometimes be a mindless or heartless genre, the story just needs a little more polish to truly shine.

The City Grew Monsters is available to buy on Amazon.