Islands of Rage and Hope

This saga of zombie apocalypse launched with Under a Graveyard Sky and floated through To Sail a Darkling Sea. Six months into the story we have a thirteen-year-old female Lieutenant of Marines with thousands of hours of bloody ship clearance under her belt. We have her slightly older sister ranked Squadron Commander. An expedition launches to reclaim parts of the Caribbean for uninfected humanity.

Scenarios range from an all-woman party in lockdown, awaiting and dealing with members succumbing to the plague, to gore-spattered encounters with the insanely aggressive victims of the disease. In this progression, we see a brilliant young commander seasoning troops in actual combat, inculcating her charges with the peculiarities of zombie elimination. We see that same girl-becoming-woman hilariously attempting to reshape her interactions to become a “better” officer.

Formidable actors and duffers alike emerge from the freed base of Guantanamo Bay; deep cover yields a more dangerous scrummer than Faith: one almost five times her age

John Ringo does characters in depth, he does them believably, and he lets us smell their bad breath whilst sympathizing with their terrors. The scope of his world is liberating, even while his logistic and chronological constraints make for excruciating conflict.