Infected

A new Terry Tyler series is a cause for celebration for me so I was delighted to receive a review copy of Infected. The SFV series is Tyler's take on the classic zombie novel and I loved how she blends that genre with a post apocalyptic narrative. I got so caught up in reading Infected that I devoured the whole book in a single day. It's such an exciting read!

Witnessing the rapid spread of SFV-1 from different viewpoints keeps the story interesting with a constant niggling uncertainty about the fate of the characters I wasn't with at any one time. Even though each of the three central people - Cat, Norah and Lion - are somewhat distanced from danger at the very beginning of Infected, they don't remain safe! I appreciated the care Terry put into making sure the supporting characters also felt authentic. It's important to me that I am not suddenly pulled out of a novel's reality by jarring character portrayals or dialogue so I was pleased to not encounter that problem at all.

Reading Infected in the hindsight of Covid was an interesting experience as aspects of such novels that I might previously have scoffed at, were shown to be depressingly realistic. As with Terry's previous post-apocalyptic series, her understanding of human nature and people's weaknesses gives a great depth and plausibility to her writing. Infected is the first of three linked novels in the SFV-1 series, each of which (as I understand it) needs to be read in order as the overall storyline continues through them. There is a strong sense of that continuity at the end of Infected which left me keen to launch into reading its sequel, although I was pleased that Terry didn't stop the characters' journeys too abruptly at this point.