Sole Survivor – Zachary Ashford

Solid 3.5

A motley crew of people are cast on a survival show with their only goal to be the last one standing. However, things quickly go awry when their plane crashes and they are left on the island with no supplies and dwindling hopes of a rescue. Things go from bad to worse when something in the trees start picking them off one by one, giving the ‘Sole Survivor’ show a whole new meaning.

This was every bit the gore-soaked madness that I’ve come to know and love from Ashford! It was an adrenalized run through a nightmare landscape where your fellow man was just as likely to take you out as the horrifying creatures in the trees. First flies (obnoxious little blighters that they are) and now koalas, no seemingly innocuous animal is safe when it comes to Zachary Ashford!

With the story being so fast-paced, I did feel like it suffered a little in character development. There were a lot of characters that the story just kind of dives into without any sort of introduction as to who they are or even how many there are. Then before you knew it, most of them were dead so they didn’t really matter anyway. I’d have liked the cast to be a little tighter and more rounded out so I could feel more for them when something happened. Robin felt the most concrete to me, but the others felt a bit more cookie cutter than I wanted.

Some parts also got a little repetitive, especially the description of the koalas (or drop bears, rather). The problem with bringing in a cast of characters one-by-one is that you then have them reacting to the same thing in the same way because they didn’t get a chance to see and describe them as a cohesive unit. So this lead to a lot of ‘prehensile tails’ and ‘koala-like bears’ descriptions as each character saw them for the first time. I was also confused by what exactly a drop bear is. While the characters were all from Australia and would know, some sort of explanation of it would’ve been really helpful for us readers outside of Australia!

I did have a lot of fun reading this, despite what it may seem like! Anytime I pick up one of Zachary’s books, I know I’m in for an adventure that will have me making faces in public that people give me the side-eye for. I’m really looking forward to the second book and seeing where this trash TV show goes from this absolute cock-up!