‘Autumn: The City’ – David Moody (Gollancz)

Doesn’t time just fly when you’ve got a pile of books that is steadily climbing up your bedroom wall...? It feels like I read David Moody’s ‘Autumn’ only last week but a quick look at the blog reveals that it was way back in November last year. Sometimes I feel like life is going just a little too fast for me to keep up with! Anyway...


In case you were wondering, I absolutely loved ‘Autumn’ with its very downbeat and low key depiction of a zombie apocalypse. Niall, on the other hand, was very disappointed with the opening instalment in Moody’s series. As always, I would say that the real truth of the matter probably lies somewhere in the middle of these two opinions. In ‘Autumn’s’ defence though, I’d say that it’s very much about setting the scene for events to come and, if the dead aren’t eating people right from the outset, then there won’t be an awful lot happening... at least to start with. Niall’s ‘short tempered’ characters were shell shocked by events (as far as I could see) so I could forgive them being a little snappy.

The long and short of it is that I’ll lay money on my having looked forward to the next instalment far more than Niall; I know that I jumped on my copy when it arrived. It wasn’t a perfect read but it didn’t let me down either...

In the wake of whatever it was that killed billions of people on one September day a small group of survivors hole up in the middle of the desolate remains of a city and try to make a life for themselves amongst the ruins. They are not alone though... Corpses that were originally lying in the streets have begun to get up and start walking around and their interactions with the survivors are growing steadily more violent. The survivors are outnumbered hundreds of thousands to one and it’s clear that their future must lie outside the city. How will they escape though and what kind of future awaits them even if they manage this? Perhaps the most important question though is where the convoy of armed soldiers has come from all of a sudden...

Moody’s zombies are slowly but surely evolving and becoming more aware of their surroundings; this comes with displays of near homicidal rage whenever they see one of the living. While this may not be good news for the characters trying to eke out an existence in this post apocalyptic landscape it’s definitely welcome news for readers who were looking to see things really kick on from the previous book. You can’t just walk along a street full of zombies now; finding cover is the order of the day now and if you’re spotted then you had better be ready to make a quick getaway! This new development makes for some exciting moments as people search for food etc while trying to avoid becoming lunch at the same time. It also pushes the plot inexorably forwards as our survivors swiftly realise that staying in one place will only lead to eventual disaster; for some as yet unknown reason every single zombie in the city is making its way towards their shelter... Something has to be done and it has to happen soon. Our cast of characters here include a couple of familiar faces (providing continuity from the previous book) along with a larger number of new players. Everyone is pushing in the same direction for the most part (namely to survive what has taken place) and this does mean that there isn’t a lot of variety in the cast. The one main exception to this felt more than a little contrived when set against this particularly bleak background; there are easier ways to commit suicide than go out in a haze of alcohol and Moody captures this far more effectively in a heartbreaking moment between mother and daughter...

‘Autumn: The City’ is very much a book where things start to happen although don’t come to this book expecting answers to the questions raised in the first book. What you get instead are the introduction of elements that will eventually come together to give you an answer, at least that’s the way I see it happening. I am intrigued enough to want to stick around for the long haul and the sombrely realised landscape (with its motley collection of survivors trying to get by) more than helps foster this resolution.

This bleak landscape is one of the most effective tools that Moody brings to the book (and the series as a whole I suspect) as it lends a dark tone to everything that takes place here. At the same time though, it also works against what Moody is trying to do and this can make for a frustrating read at times.

The bottom line is that there’s just too much landscape and not enough people left alive to play in it (I’m not counting the zombies here as they’re pretty much part of the scenery anyway). The impression I got here was that the wide open spaces are so vast that the activities of the survivors lose their impact against such a large backdrop and become less significant as a result. You could argue that this is actually the whole point of a zombie novel as it’s all about the fact that railing against a zombie uprising is ultimately pointless; if you don’t find yourself being eaten then the odds are that you will eventually join the ranks of the living dead. While I can see that here my main impression was that the stage was simply too big and I had trouble finding the players on it...

This wasn’t a big enough issue to stop me reading although I will be interested to see if this problem reoccurs in future works. ‘Autumn: The City’ is a book that starts to encounter problems as it moves the plot forward but the ultimate direction that things are moving in are more than enough to keep me reading for now.

Eight and Half out of Ten