Review of “Infected Freaks Volume One: Family First”
Review by Joy Yehle

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00N70QYAK

I’m not going to lie, I love The Walking Dead, but I hate the long breaks between the short seasons. I’ve been searching for something to fill the void and I think I may have finally found it in Jason Borrego’s zombie world.

I picked up “Infected Freaks Volume One: Family First” by Jason Borrego not knowing what to expect. What I found was a family man in a desperate world torn apart by a civil war with global impact. Abraham Heinz is trying to keep his family alive and reunite with members driven apart by the civil war. He is facing conflict on every front, including his own aging body.

If that isn’t bad enough, a possible cosmic occurrence has changed the environment and a very real fungus has mutated to infect humans. Those infected become grotesque, homicidal…well, freaks. The Infected are pushing on to Abraham’s relatively safe mountain farm and in the face of more loss than he can handle he has to make a move into uncertain territory.

The story is extremely fast paced, and the author is effective in using language to create and maintain tension throughout the story. To my delight, I found myself tightening up every muscle in my neck while reading. It’s not only the kick-ass-zombie-smashing-gore-flying scenes, either. The internal and external struggles of the relatable characters really make this a compelling and interesting story.

It can be argued that zombies and their tales have come to represent real-world fears and Jason Borrego touches on just about every one. The struggles within a family and the things that come between us; the loss of a family member; the divided political environment of the United States; uncontrollable spread of disease; war; and the darker side of human nature. Any one of the circumstances of Infected Freaks are plausible making this story even more disturbing in the best way.

This is the first of a planned series of novella length installments. I’m hoping the author doesn’t make us wait too long in between releases. The waiting is killer.