“Survive, Rescue, Rebuild”
The Remaining follows Captain Lee Harden on a mission to rebuild society, after an apocalyptic disaster has brought humanity to its knees with a sickness that turns people into swarms of violent infected.
After a month of isolated living in his secure bunker, Lee emerges to find that the world has transformed into a wasteland of predators and prey. Upon leaving his sanctuary to search for survivors, he finds that not all among the living are in need help. Besides the blood-lusted infected, there are murderous gangs around every turn taking full advantage of a lawless society and they give chase to Lee and the survivors he’s picked up along the way. Lee stands as protector over a handful of survivors through these unfortunate and uncertain circumstances as they follow his lead and give him support.
The book starts off a bit slow, but what sort of world building isn’t slow. Lee’s background needs to be established as a capable, battle-hardened soldier, who’s been cooped up with no human interaction for almost 30 days before the real action can begin. When the action does start though, it doesn’t stop until the very end. This story is well written, packed with suspenseful gory encounters, and none of them disappoint. In the event that there ever is a zombie apocalypse, you can imagine the events of this story taking place in the real world.
The infected in this book are among some of the best and most terrifying of any zombie/infected type monsters ever. The infected are people who are having their brains slowly destroyed by a bacteria, and during their slow decent into violent madness they maintain some of their human faculties. These are fast paced creatures hell bent on murdering and eating the uninfected, who shout profanities and often wield weapons such as sharp knives, garden tools, and the occasional shovel.
While reading The Remaining you’ll grow attached to Lee and the survivors, mourn the losses, and share their relief during their encounters when there are none.
By the end of the book, Lee fails to make much progress in terms of his mission’s goal to rebuild society, but despite all odds he survives through every trial thrown his way, and finds enough survivors to give hope that in the next installment of the series we will get to see him make it a little further.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for some fantastic post apocalyptic themed fiction. It’s a quick read, or at least it will feel like one, because you won’t be able to put it down.
I happily rate The Remaining an 8/10.
monkeyscrolls.com 
This is greatt