Alive

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Alive (The Generations Trilogy, Book 1) by Scott Sigler

First book of 2019 is BRUTAL. ☠️

Alive is beautifully brutal, and gorgeously graphic. There’s blood, murder, gore, the rotted flesh from human remains, bones used as weapons, and a particular scene describing... well, read for yourself:

“Babies.
Hundreds of little corpses dangle from the ceiling, so thick I almost can’t see the ceiling itself. They hang from chains that end in metal hooks slid through their rib cages. Cracked, dry skin has peeled away from their bodies, showing the bones beneath. Clumps of fallen flesh cover the floor like some horrid scattering of snow.”

😵🤢🤮(Ok, so that just happened)
On its own the scene isn’t that bad, but come on man, did they have to be babies?

Suspense is the name of the game here, and it rarely lets up. The entire time you're wondering where these characters are and how they ended up in such a nightmarish place. And adding to the mystery of it, I love how this series doesn't follow what is commonly believed to be the best way to tell a story: starting at the end, then going back to the beginning, and then jumping back and forth throughout the story. (I don't hate this format, but I do hate that it's often considered the best format).

But Scott Sigler doesn't do that here. Instead, it starts at the end and then just keeps going forward. There's no flashbacks or anything showing you how the characters got there. You discover and learn the backstory as the characters do, as they explore the world, find clues, and join other survivors hoping they might know something you don't. And I say "you" because Alive utilizes a seemingly forgotten, but age-old practice, of connecting the reader to characters that are otherwise unrelatable: You never know more than the characters do. Allowing you, the reader, to be just as engaged as the characters themselves.