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Review: Worse Than Dying by Brett Van Valkenburg

February 18, 2024 by C. J. Daley (CJDsCurrentRead) Leave a Comment

Rating: 10/10

Synopsis

After his father suffers a nervous breakdown, Noah Barnes is tasked with caring for his family in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. A dark novella about fight and family, as one survivor confronts untold loss and struggles with unimaginable choices.

Worse Than Dying takes place in a small town in upstate New York toward the beginning of an inexplicable uprising of the living dead. This powerful story is a more adult take on the zombie horror genre with fast pacing, mature themes, and, of course, plenty of disfigured, flesh-eating corpses.

Review

Today I’m sharing a real favorite and a fantastic find. The fact that I just happened across this one, and that more people aren’t reading/talking about it, is just a real travesty. And this cover is sick! Check it out PLEASE! Here is my original review.

I happened across this on Amazon while ordering my Spooky Season 2022 reads and I’m so glad I did. A zombie-apocalypse survival horror novella? Yes, yes please. This actually won in a poll for my next read, so I can thank my friends/followers for this awesome 1 day read. 

I picked this up and started it right after finishing Prosper’s Demon by K. J. Parker (feel free to read my review for it here on GR), which I thoroughly enjoyed. I kind of expected to have that kind of in between, oh I have to learn the setting and characters again feeling, but I was so, so wrong and pleasantly surprised. I was sucked in from the first page. To put it simply, this book is so riveting, a whirlwind of anxiety and adrenaline and edge-of-your-seat scares. When I called it riveting my fiancée said I hadn’t said that about a book in a good while…so let that stand for something. 

To me, this novella is exactly what I loved about the early The Walking Dead, the anxiety of learning the world and understanding that it only takes one single zombie to end your life. That the more comfortable and adept you get, it still only takes one mistake, one slip up, just a little panic, and it’s all over. That human reaction is the most realistic feeling to me about the genre. 

The reader receives a very close-knit story. The fall of the world has just happened, and this one single household is figuring out what the new normal is on their own.

I also really liked how the author subverted the usual genre trope of the deterioration of humanity, instead giving us a bad character that was bad prior. That doesn’t mean that humanity doesn’t deteriorate with the constant zombie killing, just that in this case the bad had hit their depths before it started. 

Revenge was oh so sweet, an absolute banger 5/5*, please read this. As the back cover states, if there isn’t a sequel, it’d be a damn shame.

Filed Under: Fear For All, Novella, Post-Apocalyptic, Post-Apocalyptic, Reviews, Self Published, Survivalist, Zombies Tagged With: #BrettVanValkenburg, #FearForAll, #Horror, #WorseThanDying, #zombies

About C. J. Daley (CJDsCurrentRead)

I was an avid player of Who Wants to be a Millionaire: Lord of the Rings Edition. When the millions turned out to be fake, and answering that ‘Athelas’ was another name for ‘Kingsfoil‘ grew tiresome, I retired. Now I'm a horror author and an avid reader of all things sci-fi/fantasy/horror/mystery.

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