The Fall: An Undead Apocalypse.
Zombie apocalypse is not my usual genre, but I agreed to look at this book and was happy to receive a copy from the author.
I had mixed feelings when I began The Fall. I found the opening chapters difficult to engage with and tried to work out why. There was good writing and heaps of atmosphere, but something wasn’t working for me. After much deliberation, I realized it was the language. Not all the language, just bits here and there where the writing stretched and strained for a simile too far, a word too verbose, or a point of view thought that was redundant. Nothing that couldn’t be improved with a little more parsimony, and so I read on.
Glad I did.
After the prologue, and the opening chapter in which we are inducted into the point of view of a character only to have him dropped, the story proper begins. It was not at all what I had expected.
Whilst there is a very vivid and well-drawn backdrop of contagion, with a hint of something ancient, sinister, and hinting at a very long conflict, Duperre focuses our attention squarely on the characters. These are fully-fleshed out people, the kind of flawed but altogether human beings we might number among our friends and acquaintances. There are no saints and sinners here - merely people doing the best they can with a shitty lot; individuals struggling in the big, corporate, indifferent world. The only relationships that matter are the little ones, the close ties: family and friends, colleagues. Those in a particular locality/sphere of influence.
Keeping the focus here is one of the strengths of The Fall. We see what the principle characters see, feel with them, and get swept along on their respective journeys. It was always strongest for me when we were with the compelling Kyra, or with Joshua Benoit. It gets even stronger when we’re introduced to Josh’s long-time friend, Colin. The closeness of these friendships (which are never laboured - the dialogue between them is often playfully disrespectful and authentic) increases reader identification and makes one really care about their plight.
Bad things are happening around the world, and from time to time the characters are in the thick of it, but it’s the way these people deal with their immediate concerns that forms the bedrock of this tale.
Always, the zombies and wraiths close in (inexorably, as they must in this kind of story), until the point when a few survivors hit the road in the style of the first pioneers.
That leads me to the social commentary that is a feature of almost every zombie story. The collapse of society forces a return to basics, a reliance on each other, a zest for life born from the struggle simply to survive. There’s nothing like hordes of undead massacring their way through towns and cities to wake people up, to make them fully human again. It’s like holding up a mirror to society and then running from what you see.
I was pleasantly surprised to get some zombie perspective POV at one point - interesting that the host hadn’t been completely annihilated. It made me think of the use of zombies as a philosophical model looking at Cartesian dualism. I suspect, though, that it’s more bound up with the underlying cause of the apocalypse in this case, the strange beings who seem to be guiding events.
There’s enough other elements to this story to lift it above the norm for the genre. Hints are found in the prologue and dotted about in subsequent chapters. We even get some POV insight into the being known as Sam, and a female counterpart. There are forces at work other than a simple contagion released from a Mayan temple. There were one or two moments when I thought Duperre was going to give too much away, but sensibly he withheld information and makes me want to read on in the series to piece together what is happening.
The overall feeling of The Fall, for me, was closer to the golden age of Doctor Who than Resident Evil or Night of the Living Dead. By golden age, I mean Jon Pertwee as the Doctor when Earth was always being invaded. There were some great contagion stories, and often “higher/evil” beings speaking mind-to-mind with lead baddies and orchestrating the attack. The Fall is clearly more horrific than Who, but it’s breadth of ideas and focus on a small group of characters reminded me of those great old stories. There was also a hint of The Pyramids of Mars in Ken’s opening chapter in the Mayan temple.
I guess this is why I kept reading, and why I was drawn into the tale. I’m not a fan of gratuitous violence or contrived suspense, and you don’t get either of those here. The horror is always contextual in The Fall and the suspense is an effect of very tight point of view - something Duperre never deviates from throughout the main body of the story.
This is a tale of epic proportions - the sense of place and geography reminded me of the original Planet of the Apes movie. When the characters finally set out on their long journey, I know I’ll be right there along with them. Sometimes books and films just hop between set pieces with no real sense of time and place. Not so here. It’s a world to immerse yourself in, even if it’s not always a pleasant ride.
This is a very good book, beautifully illustrated (I like that the illustrations come after each chapter and serve as a visual reminder of what’s just happened).
Re my problems with the prologue and opening chapter, I feel they could have been cut and the book would have been even stronger. The prologue, in particular, is the only time there were any POV issues for me (“the girl” would presumably know her own name; there’s a use of omniscient narration here that is absent elsewhere).
There was still a smattering (and only a smattering) of verbosity here and there, use of flowery words where simple ones would have been better. The overall standard is so good, though, that these deviations don’t really get in the way. Once more, with some judicious cutting, the story would be enhanced.
Ultimately, it comes down to engagement, and Duperre easily succeeded as far as this reader is concerned. The more we were in Kyra or Josh’s POV the more powerful the engagement was. From the halfway point onwards it was a very easy book to engage with and I was able to sit back and enjoy the ride.
Ratings are utterly subjective, but for the genre, and personal enjoyment, I would give this a healthy 4.5 (which rounds up to 5 as the minor issues I had with language and the opening are rather small compared with all that is good here).
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