End of the Month Literature circle Book Review: Patient Zero

Uhh..so this week I'm writing the book review of Patient Zero. Sorry but eh, I don't really feel like writing anything right now because someone stole my Ipod Touch today during P.E -_-. Therefore, I'm just like...out of it right now. Ok so I am back and my internets all screwed up. It’s just disconnecting like every fifteen seconds and I don’t know if I’ll be able to post this up.

            So, it’s monthly review time. Great lets get started. The book that I have chosen for our very first Literature Circle was Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry. When I look back, I don’t really know why I chose this book. I was at Borders, browsing around and I just saw it in a corner. Maybe it was the awesome cover of the book, or maybe it was the description on the back. I don’t know. Take a look at it. The cover could mean anything, war, murderer, romance. Out of all that, it would probably have never been guessed that this was a story of zombies. I instantly knew that I had to have this book. After reading the small paragraph on the back of this book, I was already hooked and I DEMAND that anyone who likes horror novels, zombies, or something along the lines of that needs to read this epic book.

The story begins with this man. Some guy called Joe Ledger. Occupation: Detective. He works on the police force, but has something you can’t see, but you would get chills if you got on his bad side. He is the man who will save your ass in the events to come. From what I see, there are three groups within the story, although there might actually be just two [The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend…]. There’s Joe Ledger, and his company of ass-kicking squad, the highly, yet not very religious faction, and the typical greedy and wealthy party funding the terrorists. The book sets off on a good pace; holding your eyes so that you can’t stop reading the book the instant you set your eyes on it. Ledger gets recruited by the DMS (Department of Military Science) and also gets to meet his so called acquaintances early on in the book who describe to him the horrors of the terrorist’s plans. One of the people that Ledges meets is a queer man who goes by many names, Mr. Church, Churchill and others. This man is very mysterious, so mysterious that the world’s most technologically advanced piece of equipment is unable to find one single thing about him. So, who is he? Beats me. As the events unravel, Joe and his crew go through terrifying ordeals to discover the plans of the terrorists. I don’t want to spoil the entire book for you so let’s just say that Joe doesn’t really save the world.

John Maberry has a very peculiar style of writing. Well I think I have seen it before but I don’t remember. I have never read a book that switched between so many points of views. One second you’re in the mind of a terrorist, the next your in Joe Ledgers mind, and then you go to the mysterious leader of the Department of Military Sciences. It’s not bad, actually, it’s pretty damn smart of him because many times while I was reading the book, I became engrossed in what was happening. I turn the page and it goes off to someplace else right in the middle of the good part. I get all twitchy afterward and I have to read through a couple sections to get back to it. I can’t stress this enough, from the very start of the book, to the very end of the book, there is so much going on. It’s all really very exciting. From the zombie brain busting, to the self-inflicted wounds, everything is in such great detail. Maberry’s style of writing is like…like a T.V. I could imagine all the events being played out. Even though he doesn’t describe things in excessive detail, I could always imagine that dark, dank room filled with coppery blood. The shoes of small infants, toys, electronic devices, tattered clothes strewn all across the floor. All in all, I would state that his writing style is based a lot on action, and the ability to let the reader visualize without seeing it mind you. I’d think this book was written for guys, because of all this blood, and secret organizations, and…well…the zombies. I must applaud Maberry for writing the book like this. I have read other zombie novels but this tops them all. Using already overused ideas, he manages to put enough action so that the reader barely even recognizes that fact because they’re so into reading the next part.

The mysterious man, who lives in shadows, and dies in the shadows, the man who we know as Mr. Churchill. As I have said, no one knows who he is. In the story the Department of Military Sciences have a piece of equipment called Mind Reader which is sort of like Google, but which can pull up basically anything at will. Joe Ledger and Grace Courtland use this to try and find some bit of information of Churchill. Unfortunately for them, they don’t find anything. Nothing at all. Probably the most advanced equipment they have can’t find one single thing on this man. This piques me greatly. I want to know why he is such a shadow in the world, but also one of the most powerful men in the world, he probably has the whole world at his fingertips. Churchill already has some very important people on his side. He can get anything he wants at the push of a button. There are all these questions again which Maberry creates, which pisses me off. Despite that, I can’t help admire how he has spent a great deal of time making Churchill such a major part of the story, yet no one knows about him beyond the fact that he’s the leader of the DMS. In the first or second section of the book, Grace tells Joe how she saw Churchill fighting in the hospital. I won’t spoil it but, she says Churchill rivaled Joe in skill. Who IS this guy? Man. It really bugs me… Churchill is the type of guy who people would avoid, just cross the street and walk as fast a possible. I think that he’s creepy and it just makes me nervous how he has so much power, yet he somehow remains under the radar, unseen, and unknown except by a handful of people….

LC Letter 3

So this is the last literature circle that my group is going to write for this book. haha...HAHAHAA!!! I'm so glad, I hate writing these things. I find it difficult to write these blogs about a book after reading it. I have to say though, The last section of Patient Zero was the best part (pfft of course it is, it's the end of the book duh!). I really like how Maberry just wraps everything up so neatly, tieing off the loose ends. Now I don't want
to go into detail and spoil everything which I usually do.. -.- What I don't really get is the ending of the book. It just suddenly goes to these people. I thought that Joe Ledger would have been included at the very end which wasn't true apparently. And I would like to revisit what I said in an earlier post when I said that Joe was absorbed in his own world, well he is REALLY absorbed. whenever he not talking with someone he's all talking to himself. Even with all the surprises and the little "oh! Whoa! I didn't expect that!" moments, I thought that the things Maberry puts at the end really just makes this one of those books that gives you all this action and gets even better throughout the book until the very end. As with my previous blog, i still that some parts of the story just brings to flow of things to a grinding halt which I don't like when reading a book. Things like his attention to detail like describing to people prion diseases. Let me borrow something from alvins post. Parts like "Prions are neurodegenerative diseases called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies...sometimes you see it occurring as a result of cornea or dura mater transplants, or in the administration of human-derived pituitary growth hormones...they are not compatible according to what we know of modern transgenics---or they've found a way to alter the chemistry of the body to cause artificial hibernation...Once the victim is in hibernation this disease cluster reorganizes the functioning matrix of the body. It somehow uses fatal familial insomnia protein to wake the victim up again and keep them awake." really just bore me sometimes.

Last LC Letter

LC Letter 2

Dear Alvin,
Thanks for doubting me. Haha. Anyways I didn't really have the same feelings as you. I had more of an "Ooh awesome!" reaction when I first encountered Patient Zero. I have to admit that I'm kind of a zombie fanatic. Zombie games, T.V shows and movies although admittidely some of them freak me out. I'm a bit put out by the fact that you thought that the book I picked out was another typical zombie apocalypse book. Even so I am pleased that Patient Zero has so far, exceeded your expectations. I too agree with you yet again on the fact that in the first few chapters of the book crammed a bunch of information.

Now after going through all of the introductory phases, and all the setting up a setting and the characters part, we start getting to the juicy parts. In section two, Johnathan Maberry Really held back a lot of action to keep people glued to the book. There is just so much going on for me all at once, it makes me dizzy. First there's interesting scenes, then all of a sudden your attention just locks onto the intense zombie fighting heart throbbing action. I literally felt my heart beating because of the anticipation of what was going to happen next. When I read a couple parts of the book where Joe kills zombies, I unconciously compared
them with all the others that I've seen or read. I find myself thinking to myself,"hey these zombies move and act differently than the other ones!"
One more thing, to our surprise, johnathan maberry, the author of the book commented on alvins blog post which I thought was pretty awesome.(and creepy)

LC Letter

Well the book Patient Zero is very interesting. Mainly because I chose the book. I don't annotate at all because I can't concentrate very well. It's impossible for me to read and write at the same time. Even if I stop and start writing, I find it difficult to write anything at all. I remember when I used to annotate in middle school and the annotations never really helped me out. The book is filled with action, but there are some parts in Part One of the book where things slow down a bit which gets really boring after reading through something exciting. At first when I looked at this book's cover , it looked like a story about a patient who kills people. After reading the first part of the book, I was just thinking.. This book is good! The author just drops you into the middle of everything and for a second, you're all confused since you have no idea what's happening. The beginning starts off with the important information, skipping all the boring parts that a lot of other books have. The grabber of the story draws you in because it's about the FBI. Who wouldn't want to know what's happening when the FBI are involved? While I was reading section one, I suddenly realized that Joe Ledger, the main character tends to think to himself. Like he's talking to himself in his head. I was so absorbed in this book that I couldn't even remember who the characters names were. In my opinion the story so far doesnt have a lot of action. But when there is, it's very descriptive. It's like your playing a game, and your watching other people fight through a third person camera. Also sometimes the descriptions describe something to the tiniest detail. Like when Joe was eating an Oreo cookie, he took apart the cookie, then ate the filling and then ate the outer cookie. Overall I really enjoyed the story so far.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

The "Dead" Farm

I think I have found my source for information. There's this website that I randomly clicked on and well, it has some pretty interesting stuff. (To me) Anyways for this week, I thought we would take a look at a farm that holds death. Yes. That's what I said. Death. In Knoxville, Tennessee, at the University of Tennessee an acre of woodland is secluded. Fenced off with two fences, the outer fence made of chain-links, garnished with prison grade razor wire. The inner fence is made from wood. All of this to keep curious bystanders out. The "Body Farm" as people call it lovingly was founded in 1981 by Dr. Bill Bass, a professor of anthropology at the university. The Body farm was and is still used as a
Place where studetns gather around to study the mysteries of death. The story starts off with a quaint scene.. A quiet peaceful forest, everywhere surrounded by nature in all its glory. A man sits under a tree enjoying nature.. But wait.. Take a closer look, that man is dead. What looks like a forest is actually the testing and experimenting grounds. The corpse is actually an experiment done by some students on the effdects of bacteria and such. It's all very interesting actually. They get all these dead bodies which the put to good use of course. The experiments range from body decomposition to the study of bacteria decompositions. The bodies, which are generously donated by people giving their bodies away to science. On the body farm, the majority of the bodies are naked, with a few exceptions like seeing how clothing affects the rates of something. Sorry if I'm sorta repeating some information. I'm typing on my iPod and my friends are here bothering me lol. Anyways the doctor was all like diagnosing a victim and hypothesized that the victim died not very long ago but it actually died in the civil war period. This prompted him to create the body farm so that people could practice identifying what happened to the body. Even the police use them to reenact the crimescene. The bodies are placed in some pretty random places like cars cement vaults graves bags water or just lying about. The first victim of the body farm was a hog named pig doe. They noticed that a low fly planted eggs inside of it only eighty seven seconds into the death of it. The researchers there also use chemicals on the bodies and stuff.
The reason we start decomposing so fast is because our stomach doesn't create any more stomach acid and then the bacteria grow fast. The report goes into detail about the decay time for humans. It really goes into detail, explaining how the body changes every couple of days talking about insects and bacteria. I also learned that natural soap can be produced since we accumulate a lot of body fat. Dr.bass the scientist suggested that there should be facilities like his everywhere because it could help crime units and investigators in murders and things like that.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]