Eric S. Brown & Susanne Brydenbaugh, Cobble

Synopsis:

"The Dead have risen. Humanity teeters on the edge of extinction. Only one remote island called Cobble remains as the last holdout of civilization and hope until a military unit fleeing the mainland arrives on the islanders' doorstep, demanding to be allowed to stay. Amongst them is a man whose dreams span the length of time itself and who may hold the key to the human race's salvation. But they are not the islands' only visitors. A dark, demonic creature intent on finishing its work of destroying God's world reawakens the island's dead, once more fanning the fires of distrust and hatred as the islanders and the military unit seek to find a way to settle out their differences and work together."

First published back in 2005 by Mundania Press LLC, 'Cobble' is a post-apocalyptic zombie novel that was jointly written by Eric S. Brown and Susanne Brydenbaugh. Although the novel is Brown's first full-length novel, the tale is still a mere 108 pages in length.

The storyline starts off straight into the action with the zombie epidemic already leaving humanity teetering on the brink of extinction. The tale paints a brutal picture of survival as the reader is quickly shown the reality of the situation on the small island of Cobble. Individual's ideas on how best to tackle the problem of supporting a community differ throughout the island, causing aggression and hostile feelings amongst the island dwellers.

The main characters are introduced within the first twenty pages, but unfortunately the characterization is never really developed upon from here, leaving each one seemingly one-dimensional.

New dramatic events soon affect the island with new arrivals and a tricky moral decision to make. From here the plot seems to thicken out somewhat, with separate sub-plots weaving through the tale nicely. Alas, these subplots are never really given any proper direction within the tale and eventually fall from the storyline almost completely.

With new events occurring all the time now on the island, the authors decide to throw in a whole new danger. Like in David Wellington's 'Monster' trilogy or Brian Keene's zombie novels, we know see the emergence of a leading figure for the undead army. A battle between the living and the dead soon takes place with a dramatic, supernatural finale. Unfortunately this grand finale is a little cumbersome and seems to lose itself rather quickly. After a couple of re-reads I still couldn't properly follow the thread of what actually happened, but got to the outcome nonetheless.

The downbeat ending does deliver the classic glimmer of hope for the remaining survivors, giving the novel a satisfying ending.

I found 'Cobble' to be a clumsy read, with many spelling and grammatical errors throughout the book. With the lack of chapters, the book is a bit too text solid at times. It is broken into two parts along with an Epilogue at the end, but this still seems a little too bulky, for such a short novel.

The tale never really sets down any sort of atmosphere and lacked spending the time to build up the characters for the reader to really picture in their minds eye. With the characters never really given any life to their personalities and as such the reader cannot sympathise or relate to any of them as the tale unfolds.

The separate subplots, although individually interesting, certainly needed to be more actively involved with the running storyline rather than left to simply fall away.

All in all, I would say that 'Cobble' is an interesting approach to the post-apocalyptic zombie genre, but needs a lot of re-working. The plot is too loose throughout and the storyline is clumsy and too compact.

The book also includes a two page introduction by Mark McLaughlin (author of 'Slime After Slime' and 'Pickman's Hotel'). There are also author bios for Eric and Susanne and a bonus four-page zombie short story by Eric entitled 'And The Dead Shall Rise'.