The Down Home Zombie Blues
In this steamy, suspenseful new novel from RITA Award?winning author Linnea Sinclair, a dangerously sexy space commander and an irresistibly earthy Florida police detective pair up to save the civilized galaxy . . . but can they save themselves from each other?
Bahia Vista homicide detective Theo Petrakos thought he?d seen it all. Then a mummified corpse and a room full of futuristic hardware sends Guardian Force commander Jorie Mikkalah into his life. Before the night?s through, he?s become her unofficial partner?and official prisoner?in a race to save the earth. And that?s only the start of his troubles.
Jorie?s mission is to stop a deadly infestation of biomechanical organisms from using Earth as its breeding ground. If she succeeds, she could save a world and win a captaincy. But she?ll need Theo?s help, even if their unlikely partnership does threaten to set off an intergalactic incident.
Because if she fails, she?ll lose not just a planet and a promotion, but a man who?s become far more important to her than she cares to admit.
The Down Home Zombie Blues Accessories
 Shades of Dark
Games of Command (Bantam Spectra Book)
Gabriel's Ghost
Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson, Book 3)
Grimspace
Finders Keepers
An Accidental Goddess (Bantam Spectra)
Cry Wolf (Alpha and Omega, Book 1)
Kitty and the Silver Bullet (Kitty Norville, Book 4)
Magic Burns (Kate Daniels, Book 2)
The Down Home Zombie Blues Reviews
The secondary characters in this book are almost better delineated than the leads. This one manages to clip right along. It's not as engaging as Games of Command (Bantam Spectra Book), but better than a couple of her earlier books that sagged in the middle. I really wish that she would vary her characters a bit more though. The Away Team beams down from the Enterprise into an alley on 21st century earth hunting and alien menace oh, wait a minute, I mean Commander Jorie Mikkalah and her hunter team PMATs into an alley on 21st century earth searching for a menace that is alien to Earth but not to her people. Taken for what it is a not too demanding science fiction adventure with some action and some romance, this book is well worth a look.
It's not bad; very readable, actually, but the characters and situation just never gelled as strongly as her other tales. And I had hoped this book would help me recover my confidence in Sinclair after reading WINTERTIDE, which was a fairly mediocre fantasy and severely disappointing. And determined to find a way to escape after the threat to his world by the Zombies is solved. Sadly, I can't say it has helped. Several elements could have been interestingsuch as the implant put into Patrakos to ensure his behavior when they return to Earth. Jorie and her folk are human and speak a variant of English, which is never quite explained, although the similarity is remarked upon and perhaps there was some connectionbut how that could be is beyond me, since English is such a melange of Earth-centric languages.
Petrakos and Jorie getting together while trying to anticipate Zombie attacks and countering even more opposition should have been more interesting than it was for me. Or that suspenseful. Other threats seemed to come and go, as well. Anyway, Jorie is fairly straight-forward herself, just a girl who wants to do her duty and kill Zombies. He finds himself in charge of the strange computer they operative had, something Jorie needs to secure for the information it contains about the Zombies. It also draws the Zombies to it (as does other Guardian tech, such as their transporter-beams), so when a Zombie suddenly appears, Patrakos is there to help kill it, along with Jorie, and she's forced to beam him up with her, since he's seen too much and needs to be resettled to a paradise-like worldsomething Petrakos isn't in favor of.
Neither were all that interesting. Bahia Vista, Florida, Homicide Detective Sergeant Theo Patrakos is called to the scene of a mummified corpseunknown to him, it's one of the Guardian operatives who has been killed by a Zombie. But it didn't pan out.
Jorie is a commander in the Guardians, a military force that hunts Zombiesa creation of the Interplanetary Concord that has gone out of control, breeding colonies guided by Prime and wreaking havoc on various planet they spread to. But I think most will find this book worth reading if they like Sinclair's other books. I was more disappointed than anything, since I enjoyed ACCIDENTAL GODDESS and GAMES OF COMMAND so much. Their relationship was therefore not so interesting, either, although I did feel sympathy for them and hoped they'd get together. And the resolution was a bit improbable. Petrakos is just your typical guy who wants to do his duty and happens to have Greek ancestry so words and a bit of the culture are dropped now and then. I love Linnea Sinclair's mix of SF action/adventure and a bit of romance, but this is my least favorite of hers, so far (her fantasy, WINTERTIDE, was worse, but I'm only counting her SF, here). He convinced the Guardians that he can act in the place of their dead operativehelp the team fit in with earth ways so they don't stick out while they hunt Zombiesso he can return to the Earth for a brief time before being transported away.
The plot wasn't all that interesting, either. How they are supposed to deal with these monstrous creatures who can kill thousands and are some 15' tall, without something like the Men In Black's amnesia-flash, isn't quite explained. I never got a good grasp on their characters. Jorie find herself leading a covert team on a nil-tech planet where they are forbidden to disclose their existence because this has caused problems (wars and red-tape and obstruction) in the past.
The author draws you into her universe with a fantastic balance between characters, relationships, and world-building. "Down Home Zombie Blues" had great characters, believable technology, and humor that kept me reading well into the night. Theo is strong, capable, and surprisingly accepting when his ordinary city turns into an alien battleground. Jorie is smart, honorable, and cares more about people than about following the rules.
If you're new to Sinclair, start with one of her other books. The leading lady spends an awful lot of time bragging, for someone too stupid to spend 2 minutes standing on a street corner figuring out traffic rules. She is under orders to stay discrete, as anyone who sees her & her group must be moved to another planet forever (so they can't tell anyone, I suppose). So, she walks around in weird looking clothing, toting giant guns, steals a car, drives randomly through traffic ignoring stoplights and lanes, and despite numerous accidents arrives at her destination without a string of police cars on her tail.
I am glad that some readers greatly enjoyed this book, but it isn't up to Sinclair's usual standards come on, keep your finger off of the "useless" button long enough to admit you liked An Accidental Goddess (Bantam Spectra) better. A futuristic female warrior lands in present-day Florida to fight evil aliens ("zombies"). There, she kidnaps a detective who saw her and convinces him to help her.
I really expect futuristic warriors to be a lot more competant. This is all supposed to be funny, but for me it all just fall flat.
This is Star Trek cheapness at it's very worst, and totally unjustified in a supposedly serious tale of alien invasion, etc. Which involves an invasion by zombies (bioengineering gone bad, a perfectly respectable premise in itself), and an intergalactic Romance, about which I have nothing to say except that I prefer my romantic tensions a bit subtle. What a strange book. The aliens are 1) completely human, even though there is no suggestion of actual common ancestry with us, and 2) one of their main languages (Vekran) just happens to be a slightly altered English, with again, no indication that Vekran or English somehow derived from the other. (Maybe were meant to laugh. I suppose it's possible). That starting premise is so silly that it utterly cheapens and undermines everything else science-fictional that happens in the book.
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