A pandemic has swept through the city of London and most of the population has been changed, altered: turned into monsters. A handful of immune have holed up inside an underground government bunker, but someone needs to investigate just how bad things above ground really are—enter Carlton Pearcey and Sonny-Jim Gallagher. What starts as a brief excursion to the surface changes when Sonny-Jim needs to find his daughter; and so the two men head out across a city crumbling under the weight of an apocalyptic disease.
4 Hours, by John F Leonard, is a turbo-charged sprint through a forever changed and unforgiving world filled with danger at every turn and a torrent of blood and mangled bodies. The main characters are a pair of likeable dudes, and the tension of their trip is increased with the knowledge of what’s at stake and the constant reminder that the sun is sinking—being stuck out in the city at night with hideous monsters can only end one way: badly. The monsters that London’s population have turned into are horrific (but in a good way), and their threat is as real and identifiable as the two main characters are likeable. There’s no shortage of tense moments and bashed in brains, and John F Leonard does a great job of describing this gore-fest in an artistic way.
The book’s prose is short sharp sentences: one-liners stacked on top of each other like the floors of a flimsy block of flats in London’s east end. While this does serve to pull the reader along at a fast pace, I found it very jarring; just not something I’m used to. There are four characters we meet during this high-octane jaunt—three of them are pretty cool, interesting, and make the story come to life … the other one I seriously wondered what was the point of them being there in such a small amount of pages.
In the end though, 4 Hours was see-sawing between a strong three star rating or a weak four star rating. I ultimately settled on four stars simply because I love post-apocalyptic fiction and stories with drama. Besides, this is 149 pages of violence and gore; man versus monsters … and you can’t go wrong with that.
4 Hours, by John F Leonard, is a turbo-charged sprint through a forever changed and unforgiving world filled with danger at every turn and a torrent of blood and mangled bodies. The main characters are a pair of likeable dudes, and the tension of their trip is increased with the knowledge of what’s at stake and the constant reminder that the sun is sinking—being stuck out in the city at night with hideous monsters can only end one way: badly. The monsters that London’s population have turned into are horrific (but in a good way), and their threat is as real and identifiable as the two main characters are likeable. There’s no shortage of tense moments and bashed in brains, and John F Leonard does a great job of describing this gore-fest in an artistic way.
The book’s prose is short sharp sentences: one-liners stacked on top of each other like the floors of a flimsy block of flats in London’s east end. While this does serve to pull the reader along at a fast pace, I found it very jarring; just not something I’m used to. There are four characters we meet during this high-octane jaunt—three of them are pretty cool, interesting, and make the story come to life … the other one I seriously wondered what was the point of them being there in such a small amount of pages.
In the end though, 4 Hours was see-sawing between a strong three star rating or a weak four star rating. I ultimately settled on four stars simply because I love post-apocalyptic fiction and stories with drama. Besides, this is 149 pages of violence and gore; man versus monsters … and you can’t go wrong with that.