(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

Autumn: Disintegration is the penultimate chapter in David Moody’s riveting horror series!

Forty days have passed since the world died. Billions of corpses walk the Earth. Everything is disintegrating. . . .

A group of eleven men and women have survived against the odds. On an almost daily basis, they attack the dead with brutal ferocity, tearing through them with utter contempt.
Somewhere nearby, out of sight and out of earshot, is another group that has adopted a completely different survival strategy. Where the others have used brutality and strength, these people have demonstrated subtlety, planning, and tactics.

A series of horrific events force the two groups together. Backed into a corner and surrounded by hundreds of thousands of corpses, they all know that their final battle with the dead is about to begin.

Like I somehow do with most series, I’m not actually reading Autumn in order.  I read the first book and the second book and since I couldn’t find the third book when I went shopping the other day I decided to pick up book 4, Disintegration.

Unlike with the previous two books, I wasn’t really all that impressed with Disintegration.  Sure, it’s kind of cool to see how two completely different groups are managing to stay alive in such a horrific world, but the formula David Moody uses is getting kind of boring.  (SPOILERS)  Essentially a bunch of survivors mope around for a while, things get bad, they join another group and bring about its downfall.  Sure, he changes the names around a little but they’re basically all the same book at this point.  It’s kind of disappointing as someone who appreciates the overall plot arc of the series.

But as a novel on its own merit, Disintegration isn’t all that bad.  David Moody is still a master of suspense and he’s good at describing such a horrific world without ever going into descriptions of gore for gore’s sake.  Don’t get me wrong, though; this book is still pretty gory.  It’s just that it’s not gratuitous.  I like how he has his zombies develop abilities even as they deteriorate, which is somehow more terrifying because there’s the possibility they could even become fully human as they rot away to nothing.  If that’s not horrific I don’t know what is.

The characters were a solid ‘meh’ in this story.  None of them really stood out to me unless we’re talking about total jerks that get people killed, like Webb.  Yeah I know he’s a hothead kid but he’s the epitome of the Too Stupid to Live trope.  While not exactly being brilliant at it, David Moody still did a good job imagining how the group dynamics would be in such a diverse group of people.  People are constantly getting on each others’ nerves and pretty much no one agrees on what the solution to the zombie problem is.  Essentially, it’s a group of real people and is probably how most people would react in a zombie apocalypse.

So basically this one’s a solid ‘meh’.  I hope the fifth book is better.

I give this book 3/5 stars.

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