Severance by Ling Ma

Cover Art Courtesy of Goodreads

I recently resubscribed to Book of the Month, and this was my December pick. Severance by Ling Ma promised plagues and zombies, and a post-apocalyptic New York City. While it did deliver on those promises, it did not deliver in the way that I had hoped.

Candace lives in New York City, and works at a company who outsources the publishing of books. When a major pandemic hits, people are left as shells of their former selves, technically alive but forced to repeat the mundane tasks in their lives over and over again in a zombie state. Candace escapes New York after being found by a group of survivors, and embarks on a journey with them to a promised safe-house facility.

I just could not get behind this story. It was told in alternating chapters of before the plague and after, and I thought most of the before parts were unnecessary and didn't add anything to the story. I thought Candace was boring, and I didn't care what happened to her character. So many of the plot elements didn't make sense with what had been established already, and lots of questions were left unanswered. I also hated the way it ended.

When I saw this was a post-apocalyptic novel with zombies caused by a plague, I was excited, but this story just left me bored. The zombies aren't scary. There are no real high-stakes. It had all the bad parts of The Walking Dead with none of the excitement. I did enjoy the pieces about the NY Ghost blog, and the descriptions of desolate New York were good.

I found myself barely skimming towards the end just to get through it. Maybe there was a deeper meaning here that I just missed. All I know is I wanted an exciting zombie story and did not get it.

Overall Rating: 1 out of 5 Stars