Review for Zaven by Jed Cullen

Friendship is at the heart of Zaven, not the zombies. Four teenage boys start the first day of school only to have it end drastically different. A world tilting on its axis toward crazy. Relying on both resourcefulness and each other, they manage to shore up their defenses to ride things out.

Those connections between the main characters are the strongest parts of the novel. The interactions between each other, whether in supporting one another through the crisis or in having tempers understandably flare up, drove the story. Given how the boys were presented as a collective, their personalities could have easily been hard to distinguish from one another. The author does a good job with this though, making each character very distinctive. Both physically and otherwise.

Action scenes are also a highlight of Zaven, especially at the beginning, when the zombies are still new to the boys. The pace is fast but always with enough description to still picture what is going on. Quite a few parts reminded me of Mad Max, in terms of what and how the boys were able to approach the zombie hordes.

The zombies themselves were a bit hit or miss at times. What they could or couldn’t do wasn’t always consistent even given some things I can’t dive into because of spoilers. Because of this lack of consistency, the threat level of the zombies just wasn’t high enough to keep stakes up through large parts of the novel. It was almost like the shambling undead were there to be a comedic backdrop at points instead of true antagonists.

Even though I commended the relationship between the boys earlier, the dialogue between them at several points is one reason for the lower rating. I think the author didn’t want to put a lot of key information in expository form (often called info dumping), but instead chose to disguise it as talking between characters. Unfortunately, this led to some lines that definitely didn’t sound like sixteen-year-old boys talking to each other and pulled me out of the story.

Localization issues also kept making me stumble on my way through. The author is from Australia. The book is set in Florida. Especially since it is if from first-person point of view, the main character really needed to talk, sound, and think like an American teenager. He did not because of how many slang or colloquial terms were used. There were also quite a few errors scattered throughout, mostly missing words or tense issues.

What drove the rating down for me the most though was the gross portrayal of women. I almost closed the book and didn’t keep reading after the boys encounter a zombie version of one of their classmates. A zombie who for some reason has her boobs out and bouncing around despite no other zombie seemingly being described as even partially naked. “It would have been nice if I had got to see them while she was alive. As now that they were blue, saggy and maggot infested, they didn’t have the same appeal…” While that could be considered maybe just humor missing its mark with some audiences, there is an interaction toward the middle that should have had a trigger warning and didn’t.

I can’t dive in too much because of spoilers, but the boys run into a girl that they mistreat horribly. Even if there is nothing invasive done, it is still out and out sexual molestation. And the only reason it doesn’t go further is because one of the boys is infatuated with her himself. Not enough to protect her by any means, but because he wants her all to himself. At least her lower half anyway. There are a few trains of thought the main character has that show he doesn’t seem capable of out and out rape. Not enough to change this reader’s perception though, especially when it makes what does happen seem acceptable by comparison.

If you can overlook that sort of “boys will be boys” mentality, you might still find some enjoyment reading this. For me though, it was one of the rare books I wish I hadn’t read.

Zaven is available to buy on Amazon.