Most of you probably know by now that Claire C. Riley is one of my absolute favorite authors of all time. Her Odium: The Dead Saga series is what first got me reading Zombie books. Before that I thought they all seemed clichéd and sort of lame. Boy did she prove me wrong! As if I weren’t already hooked, her release of Odium Origins really just sealed the deal.
The 2nd full length book in her Odium series, ODIUM II will be releasing soon, and to get you all thinking about it, Claire has decided to let me share the brand new cover of Odium II with you all! She was also nice enough to let me post a teaser to get you guys all excited!
So far, I love all of Claire’s covers, and the cover for Odium II is no exception!
Just in case you missed my previous posts about Claire’s books, I’ll include some blurbs and links to my reviews,
along with purchase links so you can grab your own copies!
Here’s the Teaser Claire has released
for us to drool over!
The empty field and the houses in the distance, spur us both on, and I grab Mikey’s hand as we push harder, willing our legs to run faster, and our muscles not to cramp up. To cramp up now could mean death for both of us, by deader or by gun, death would be a long, drawn out painful experience. Fuck that.
With deaders in the surrounding field getting closer, the scene plays out in slow motion when I trip and fall to my knees, mud splattering up around me. Mikey turns and grips me under the arms, dragging me back up to standing.
My eyes bug out when a grey arm reaches up out of the mud and grabs at his ankle.“Mikey!” I scream.
He kicks away from the deaders reach and swings down with his fist, narrowly missing its rotten mouth which is snapping at his leg, and hitting it hard across its skull with his fist. Its head whips backwards upon impact, but the deader quickly rights itself and fixes its cloudy gaze back upon me. It stretches a rotten hand across, as it slowly pulls itself free of the mud and grass, growling and snapping its teeth. Mikey’s booted foot stamps down on its arm, snapping the bone, however the ligament still hangs by the bloated and stretched skin. The deader pays the broken limb no attention, but continues to drag is decomposing body towards me. Mikey grabs it from behind and drags it backwards. It thrashes around growling in anger in an attempt to get to me, until Mikey falls on his ass. I grab the nearest thing to me: a heavy rock, and with difficulty I launch it at the things face with a guttural cry.
It crushes into the brittle bones, making an almost concave shape where its features should be and releasing a toxic stench that I can taste in my mouth. It stops moving instantly, and collapses into the gore soaked earth around it. I look at Mikey as he holds a hand out to me, his breathe coming in jagged gasps.
“Come on, baby. We need to go.”
My shaky hand takes his, I climb back to my feet, and together we run.
Pages: 255
Genre: Horror
Published by: Breakwater Harbour Books
Published on: September 2013
Goodreads Link
Click Here For My Review
It’s better to die by the gun than die by the dead.
Nina’s life was irrevocably changed when humanity’s dead began to rise.
Now, she lives behind the walls.The barricaded cities, erected by the government to protect the remnants of civilization, have become a brutal dictatorship- causing the inhabitants within to starve, steal and claw for survival. Life behind the walls has become as terrifying as roaming the zombie-ridden landscape beyond.
Citizens trade what they can to gain food, water, and shelter. Nina has only one currency—her body and she is tired of submitting herself to the greedy hands of the self-proclaimed leaders.
An opportunity to escape presents itself in the fate of a young girl named Emily-Rose. For the price of a stale piece of bread, she is set for banishment from the city, and most likely a horrific death at the hands of the deaders. Nina tells herself that it is sympathy and not self-preservation that makes her follow the young girl out of the walled metropolis, and into the overgrown world beyond.
Unused to fighting the deaders, Nina tries to scrounge for her survival and against her better judgment, begins to care for Emily-Rose. However, when you have a bread-stealing liability providing your only back up, survival seems even tougher. Nina is forced to fight for their lives, and with every zombie slain, she becomes fiercer, faster – a grim reaper with her not-so-sharp butcher’s knife.
Along the path to a safe-haven that might not exist, Nina and Emily-Rose meet Mikey who introduces them to a new life they could not imagine, a life above the ground. However, this new world brings new dangers, and darker shadows than she knew.
Nina finds out that the deaders aren’t the only thing to fear beyond the wall.And that fear will not be ignored, or Forgotten.
Pages: 168
Publishing Date: December 2013
Goodreads Link
Link to My Review
When hell claws its way up from the dark depths of the earth, and the dead begin to walk again, for several people the zombie apocalypse doesn’t just mean the end of the world as they know it, it is also the beginning of a brave new life for them. For some it offers freedom, for others a deeper torment and unforgiving life than they ever thought possible.
The coward, the street rat, the hero, and the lovers, everyone has their place. What really decides their fate in this new existence, nature, or nurture? Who they become when the world goes to hell is the true decider on their own humanity, and will ultimately decide their fates.
Forever changed, they have to learn to adapt to this dangerous and dark new world before they become one of the living dead themselves.
Odium Origins is an accompaniment to the novel Odium. It contains several short stories featuring some of the characters that you loved to hate from the novel Odium.
Please note:
This novella may also be read as a standalone book.
If you choose to read it as part of the Odium experience, you can read it before or after reading Odium.
Purchase Links
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