It's the zombie apocalypse (not really - it's a extremely effective terrorist NBC attack (the B part)). Ringo follows a family that has some advance warning through their efforts to survive - along with humanity as a whole (from the US perspective of course).Ringo is not a great writer as such. What he does really well is to take exciting ideas and then run with it. He might bog down in parts, where more accomplished writers might have planned out the pacing better, but he manages to evoke images that make his book really fun to read.Under Graveyard Sky has a lot of those scenes. Some don't really make a lot of sense (hard not to spoil anything), but all in all it's an 'edgo of your seat' story. I just finished the third book in the series and I want more! When I go to bed, I wonder how people in my country would fare if Ringo's apocalypse actually came. Oh boy. Where do I begin?When I’m reading a story, or, in this case, listening to one, at some point I go beyond giving the tale a chance to grow on me and have to decide that it is, or isn’t, working.This one, it did not work. I’m at a loss to explain how much this did not work for me. And I think it’s a genre thing. I look around on goodreads and see four and five star reviews all over the place. Clearly, there is a disconnect here somewhere. This book isn’t written for me. I’m not the target audience, and me even attempting to rate it is folly.Except, this isn’t about anything objective, it’s just my experience with that tale being told.And how much I hated it.John Ringo is a big-time writer, I think. This is the first book of his that I’ve been exposed to, but I’ve seen his name on the spine of assorted books at the bookstore for years. He’s all over the place. I think he’s a military SF writer for the most part. I believe I’ve heard he does the military part superbly well. Good for him. Good for those that enjoy that sort of thing.As far as my enjoyment of this novel, I have to say, honestly, I’m not really sure that the author is even TRYING to tell a story here. This is 367 pages (or, in my case, 14 hours of audio) of things happening, one right after another, with no attempts at moving forward a plot, or having character arcs, or otherwise attempting to have a beginning, middle, or end.It’s just more and more stuff.The story, from what I can gather, is this. A family survives the zombie apocalypse by living on a sail boat. Then, they kill every zombie on the high seas, getting slightly better boats along the way. Also, they rescue non-zombie people.A few thoughts I had as I went through this novel:· It’s necessary to use dialog attribution sometimes, especially when multiple people are engaged in conversation. The common wisdom on this is that using, ‘he said’ or ‘she said’ is invisible. That might be the case for the written word, but most certainly is not when it comes to listening. There are so many two and three word snippets of dialog that end with that attribution that it was ready to trash my expensive earphones. It was nearly unlistenable. He said she said Steve said Sophie said Faith said Tom said ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!· Speaking of dialog. This might be the most dialog heavy book I’ve ever read (or listened to) in my life. There is almost no narration AT ALL. Especially once the action moves to the high seas. Even the many (and repetitive) zombie killing scenes are almost all dialog. Truly, it was bizarre.· Did I mention repetitive? There were some cases when I was almost positive that chunks of dialog were being copied from earlier portions of the book and pasted later. Every time a new human was found, they got the same speech. That means I had to listen to the same speech. WTF?· And speaking of dialog. Most of it was random stuff. Not really advancing the plot, or developing character. It’s just like… well, true story, I once decided to read the transcripts of the communiques between astronauts and ground control during the Apollo missions and found almost everything was highly formal, and used lots of acronyms and shorthand. Lots of things like "Copy that,' and 'We're go' and 'Engaging throttle.' No context, just quick sentences. Well, that’s what the dialog is like in this book. Ugh.I know I mentioned the lack of coherent story before, but I really want to rehash that. THERE IS NO STORY. You can certainly argue that there is a premise here. I’d agree with that. But I’ll be damned if I can be convinced that here is any sort of story being told. I was dumbfounded that there was so little momentum to the story. Eventually, it just stopped. No climax or anything. Just killed some zombies and it was over. So strange.One more thing. This novel is so devoid of emotion, that at one point I thought the best description for it might be to explain it as a detailed outline an author might use to write a story from. Except the author’s final version was lost and they outline was published instead. Yes, that's it. This is an outline of a story that an author might choose to write someday. Maybe. And one more last thing. Faith is the character on the cover, I think (a cover, btw, I think lied to me as a reader as to what sort of story I was getting myself into). She is a tactical genius warrior woman who can kill zombies as easy as swatting flies. She takes them on by the handful, by the dozens, even hundreds towards the end. She shakes them off and laughs at their feeble attempts to bring her down. She’s an expert in guns and close quarters fighting. She’s the envy of every man, even the special forces guys that show up eventually. She’s also damned sexy and knockout gorgeous. The catch? She’s 13.I repeat. SHE IS A 13 YEAR OLD CHILD.I don’t have words for how incredulous I was. I could buy a zombie apocalypse. I can buy surviving on the high seas and all that. But that the elite warrior is a child. That’s pretty tough. Nothing in my experience has prepared me for that. I can’t jump on board. There are certain types of stories that lend themselves to super kids, but this tries to present itself as a realistic tale. Not thrilled.Oh, one more thing, for the third time: This book is in two parts. Part one is nominally interesting, as is the second. But part one is so disconnected from part two that they could have been released as entirely separate novellas and it would have made more sense.Really, the more I’m thinking about this, the more I could go on complaining. As it is though, I honestly think this is a genre thing. I love SF, but I’m not a huge fan of military SF. If this is typical for the genre, it might be the sort of thing that some folks would eat up. I’ve got my blinders on to my first love, Hard SF, which might overlap with military sometimes, but it’s seems like a long stretch from Greg Egan to Jon Ringo.I just can’t recommend anyone read this book. It’s not very good. I’m glad it’s over and I have no desire to ever read any more of this.
What do You think about Under A Graveyard Sky (2013)?
I really enjoyed this novel. I like the writing of John Ringo
—haidee1112
Great book, looking forward to the next in this series
—janesilvabr
Ringo writes some of the best comedies around.
—Sandeep
Fun zombie-killing romp. Standard Ringo fare.
—darbhina
