Title: Odium
Author: Claire C. Riley
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 374
Rating: 7/10
Claire C. Riley – Odium
I picked up my copy of Odium over a year ago now, when I paid a visit to the Second City Signing in Birmingham. It was a great day, and I came away with three or four books, and for some reason I never get round to reading this one. I’m glad I did, though.
Riley is an indie author who tells stories that’ll scare you, and this book is the first book in a series of zombie novels and follows the travels of a couple of girls after they’re exiled from behind the walls of a corrupt survivors’ camp and have to make their own way in the big, bad world.
To some extent, Riley relies on some cliches and stereotypes that are common to the zombie survival genre, but she does also add some of her own unique takes on it as well. It also borrows heavily from other genres – the romance, for example, felt very young adult to me – but manages to merge them all together into a cohesive whole.
Claire C. Riley
With many indie books, you’re subjected to grammar fails and spelling mistakes, but that’s not so here. I spotted maybe a couple of errors at most, and the layout looked good and did the contents justice. It’s strange, because reading this made me realise that I don’t actually read many zombie novels, despite being a fan of the genre.
Odium wasn’t mind-blowing, and it wasn’t the kind of book that made me just stare at the pages while asking myself ‘how did anyone come up with this?’. But it was a good read, an entertaining zombie story that’s one of the better indie novels that I’ve read in the last six months. I’d still recommend other books – such as The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey – if you’re new to the genre, but I’d recommend it if you like to support indie authors or if you’re a frequent reader of zombie stuff.
I’d be interested to see what else the author has been up to since I met her at the signing. Probably working on the rest of the series!
Claire C. Riley
