David Moody, Autumn: The Human Condition

Synopsis:

"The human race is finished. Mankind is all but dead and only a handful of frightened individuals remain. Experience the end of the world from thirty-five different perspectives. These people have survived through chance, not skill, and they are a desperate bunch; cheating lovers, work-shy civil servants, permanently drunk publicans, teenage rebels, obsessive accountants, failed husbands, first-time cross-dressers, disrobed priests and more. Part-companion, part-guide book and part-sequel, AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION follows the individual stories of these desperate survivors through the early days of the nightmare and beyond. The final book in the AUTUMN series. Download the original AUTUMN novel free from www.theinfected.co.uk".

Autumn: The Human Condition is the forth book in David Moody's post-apocalyptic zombie saga. The book is a companion book that explores various characters sub-plots during the time of the Autumn novels. The book evolved from the Autumn: Echoes series that has been available as a free download from David Moody's website. The book draws reference to a lot from all three previous Autumn novels, mostly from the third instalment Autumn: Purification.

From the very start of this companion book, the mood and atmosphere is very downbeat and dark, as the reader is taken through 35 vastly different perspectives of the end of the world. The book is broken down into time frames, starting with the horrific beginning of the epidemic to the final hours of the few survivors. A thoroughly enjoyable and in-depth read throughout, you get to follow the path of one particular zombie, allowing the reader to empathise and try to understand a little more of the stages that the zombies went through in the previous three novels.

With the exciting news recently released of David's next proposed Autumn novel, this book is a great piece of reading to take you further into his desperate world. There are a few chapters in the book that stand alone as fantastic pieces of fiction such as "Duck and Cover", "Office Politics", "The Human Condition" and "The Garden Shed". Each give a very full and eventful tale from other survivors that were never visited in the previous books. There is also a final chapter entitled "Underground" that takes you back to the underground army bunker from "The City" and "Purification", where you get to see the after effects of the devastating battle that was fought there. This particular chapter, in my opinion, is one of Moody's most dark, horrific and gore filled chapters to date.

The book ends with a few pages of character references that simply details and reminds the reader briefly of who and where the characters in the book appeared in the other original 'Autumn' books.

The book is released through David Moody's own publishing company 'Infected Books' and runs for a total of 320 pages.