David Guenther's Zombie Lieutenant: Infected World Book 2
Day Three of Jimbo's Awesome Memorial Day Event
Welcome to Day Two of Jimbo’s Awesome Memorial Day Event.
This year, I'll be reviewing four books in four days all of which were written by veterans. It's an awesome chance to highlight some of the people who have put their asses on the line to keep mine and read some military science fiction and/or fantasy in the process. And I love our veterans. So this a totes legit thing, right?
But enough about me, let's talk about David Guenther, author of Zombie Lieutenant: Infected World Book 2 and a longtime veteran of the United States Air Force. David served from 1982 to 2003, retiring at the rank of Master Sergeant (E-7). He was a 1T191 Aircrew Life Support mechanic and was deployed for Display Determination (part of Desert Storm), Desert Storm itself, Operation Southern Watch and Operation Enduring Freedom. Guenther had a part in saving many pilots after they had punched out. He worked on the C141B Air Lifter, C-5 Galaxy, F-16, A-10 (just like my buddy Swen!), OV-10, F-111E, B-52, KC-135, KC-10 and T-37. He sent me a list of places he's been stationed as long as my arm and I'm not going to list them all because I want to get to the review part of the review sometime today, BUT he also served at Eielson AFB, where my grandfather had served as a young man decades earlier, and I think that's really cool. He also, at least if I'm interpreting this right, did some work providing SERE training to our pilots.
Oh, and did I mention that I'm reviewing one of his books today?
David Guenther’s Zombie Lieutenant is a flat out good time. It’s set right after the Zombie Apocalypse while the survivors are just starting to attempt to pick up the pieces of a shattered world. Things look bleak, but there’s hope for a better tomorrow. Contrast that with a work like The Walking Dead, which I love but where everything continuously gets worse for the first what, like seven or eight seasons? Guenther’s story is one of determined people doing what they have to do to make things work. It’s not always easy. It’s frequently ugly. They do it anyway, because it’s necessary.
Guenther’s characters are hardcore. Don’t get me wrong. They’re not psycho gung-ho crazy types who charge straight in when caution is warranted. Their intelligent human beings. They’re just no the type to give up and go to ground. Think about it. If eighty-five percent of the world were either dead or had been reduced to mindless zombies, how easy would it be to give up? How hard would it be to try to gather yourself and any survivors and try to make things better in the apocalypse? How easy would it be to turn to murder and predation of your fellow human beings when there was no one around to stop you? The main characters of Zombie Lieutenant make the right choice when it would be way too easy to make the wrong one.
That’s not to say that there isn’t an opposing element of individuals who don’t do the right thing. They’re all over the place. They do what they’re going to do and they don’t apologize for it. Many of them end up paying the price for their sins. I enjoyed seeing that. Justice in the Zombie Apocalypse is swift and sure even if it’s not in strict keeping with the US Constitution. Although, to be fair, oftentimes it’s justice delivered in the form of self defense.
That’s not to say that Guenther’s society is overly organized for being in the mess they’re in. They’re a bit on the ragtag side, but they’re working toward putting something workable together. They have their squabbles and the occasional internal power struggle, but they pull together for the most part and get things done that they wouldn’t ordinarily have been able to. This is the kind of story I love to read: The story of a small group of people making things work because it makes sense for them as individuals.
Probably my favorite character in Zombie Lieutenant is a young man named Caleb White. Caleb is basically a zombie, but he has a functioning brain. He heals super fast, can sense other zombies, not get attacked by them and so on. But he can think. White is promoted to lieutenant for his work in the first book, Zombie Airman. I’m guessing that title, and the fact that White is a member of the Air Force and not one of the other branches of the military is because of Guenther’s history as a member of the USAF but I can’t prove it. Probably. I mean, I could ask and then I’d know for sure, but Guenther needs to spend his time writing and not answering stupid questions from goofball book reviewers.
True story, bro.
And for the record, I said that. He didn’t.
At any rate…
There seems to be a lot of logistics in Zombie Lieutenant: Infected World Book 2 given the fact that it was written by an NCO who fixed aircraft and not a line officer and that absolutely none of the stuff that gets procured has nothing to do with fixing aircraft. That much having been said, it all makes sense and that’s awesome. Listen, I loved watching Commando as a kid too, but there’s a lot more to both warfare and building a society than you can accomplish looking through the sights of a weapon. Guenther gets that. I’m guessing that his acumen for this type of thing comes more from his experience in actual operations than training but it freaking works and I’m happy to just cruise along content with that knowledge. Experience is a better teacher than a book anyway.
You all just gasped. You’ll be okay.
And it’s amazing how in depth Guenther gets with this kind of stuff. It’s not just military supplies that Guenther concerns himself with. We do see the characters gathering the “Three Bs” as they were once call (Bean, Bandages and Bullets) but there’s more to it than that. Everything from housing to construction equipment to long term thought about things like housing and farming are included. Guenther is a guy who has given serious thought not just what is needed to fight a battle (which is complicated enough) but about what would be needed to build a society which is similar but like eight hundred trillion times more complicated.
Guenther’s action sequences (and it wouldn’t be the Zombie Apocalypse without some gunfire and explosions, right?) are awesome. You never know when a fight is going to break out or how it is going to go but a lot of that logistics goes to keeping guns loaded. This is a good thing. It’s a weird thing for me. I wish all the members of the US Armed Forces a safe career spent training for things that they never have to engage in so that they can make it home and enjoy long lives basking in the thankfulness of the people whose lives and livelihoods they have protected. But, let’s face it, those are the real, live people that serve in the military in the real world. Service members in novels who don’t actually exist are different: They need to fight for their lives on a regular basis. In Zombie Lieutenant they do and it’s glorious.
And yes, I know that’s it’s important to many service members to get to do what they practice for real. I’d imagine it’s a lot less important to their mothers and their spouses though and, put bluntly, they have to be alive to regret the fact that they never saw combat. The fact that the servicemembers go despite the risks is what makes them so amazing. And trust me folks, they don’t call it the butchers bill for nothing.
This is the part where I talk about how I can’t wait to buy the next one. The joke’s on you. I BOUGHT THE OMNIBUS. I ALREADY OWN THE NEXT ONE. HA! And yes, I’ll be reading and reviewing it soon. You can look forward to it.
Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Looted Sodas
Zombie Lieutenant: Infected World Book 2
David Guenther
Self Published, 2019
Zombie Lieutenant and Infected World Trilogy: They Only Come out at Night (the omnibus I mentioned) are available for purchase at the following links. If you click either link and buy literally anything from Amazon I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.