Death System: A Zombicide: Invader Novel – S. A. Sidor- Review

Death System: A Zombicide: Invader Novel

S. A. Sidor

Aconyte Books

My local gaming group recently introduced some new board games, one of which happened to be a copy of Zombicide: Invader. I was familiar with the Zombicide system in general terms, as I’d followed some of the earlier, highly-successful Kickstarter campaigns for the game back when it had been solely earth-based; and of course I’ve reviewed several Zombicide novels published by Aconyte Books – including C.L. Werner’s medieval-era Age of the Undead and Josh Reynold’s post-apocalyptic Last Resort. But I’d never actually played the game itself until it was introduced to the gaming group – but I found myself swiftly hooked into it’s compelling, efficient and rapidly high-stakes gameplay as my friends and I struggled to fight against an unending horde of space zombies while attempting to escape a doomed planetoid. As such, when I realised that I had several Zombicide: Invaders novels sitting in the near-mountainous pile of books that Aconyte had kindly been sending me during my period of inactivity, I realised that there was no better time to both read some deep-space horror fiction (still something of a rarity in the horror genre) and also get better acquainted with the lore of the game and its setting.

As a setting, Zombicide: Invader has everything I love – deep space, unending hordes of zombies, mercenaries and civilians loaded down with a multitude of heavy weaponry, and more space-gore than you can shake a rotting, space-zombie limb at while its owner attempts to rip your throat out. The premise of both the game and setting is simple: xeno-zombies (undead aliens) have been infected by a space virus and now desire to tear you limb from limb; and you wish to politely decline this offer, and instead use the delightfully over-powered weapons at your disposal to fight your way to an escape vessel. It’s a neat, simple and engaging scenario that brings out a huge amount of tension, excitement and terror in equal measures when playing it as a boardgame; and I was extremely pleased to find that author S. A. Sidor has deftly translated those key elements into a pulse-pounding, fast-paced slice of action-horror in Death System: A Zombicide: Invader Novel.

Hotshot veteran pilot and our protagonist Shawna Bright is having a particularly bad day – to put it mildly. Imprisoned for crimes on the battlefield against her own squadron that she didn’t commit, Shawna finds herself locked up in the High Terror Risk Cellblock of the Extreme Security Penitentiary – the most isolated and heavily-guarded prison in all of space, which contains nothing but the absolute worst scum of the galaxy. Traitors, murderers, dictators and despots – all locked up in one place, isolated for 23 hours a day and with nothing to do but exercise, sleep – and scheme. Strangely enough, some of the prisoners aren’t content to rot away in a maximum-security prison and instead plan a prison escape. Shawna finds herself unwillingly caught up in the prison break, and eventually finds herself outside of the prison and back to flying a ship. There’s only three small problems, barely worth mentioning: 1) she’s being ordered about by a former galactic dictator whose armies once killed billions, who considers her and everyone else expendable in his escape attempt; 2) the escape attempt was caused by the guards being distracted by a mold-virus that causes any xeno to become a bloodthirsty, undead zombie; and 3) during said escape attempt, the ship Shawna is piloting is forced to crash-land on planetoid PK-L7 – which just happens to be filled with more of the xeno-zombies created by the mold. Oh – and someone’s augmented them with mysterious technology that improves their lethality. What else could possibly go wrong as Shawna desperately attempts to escape the undead while preventing a galactic dictator from killing her and escaping to wreak havoc on the galaxy.

In case you hadn’t realised by now – I really quite enjoyed Death System and the scifi zombie action-adventure that S. A. Sidor has put together for us. Admittedly it’s a slow-burner for the first hundred or so pages as Sidor efficiently lays out the setting, characters and motivations that lead towards the prison break. But once the escape actually begins and the undead start to appear, the adrenaline starts pumping and I found the pages just whizzing by. Sidor is clearly a fan of the boardgame itself, and the setting as a whole, and thoroughly leans into the ultraviolent, bullet-ridden gorefest that the game can descend into within its last few turns; diamond-sharp multi-saws chew into xeno flesh, machine-guns dump an absurd amount of ammunition into zombies and scenery alike, and explosions pepper the scenery with so much shrapnel that there are times when you want to duck as you turn the pages. Once the action starts it rarely lets up, and Sidor moves us between set-piece to set-piece with ease, leading towards a chaotic, explosive and rather surprising finale.

Now there’s a huge amount of action in the form of guns, bombs and sharp blades used to lop off undead appendages – but that doesn’t mean that Sidor has forsaken the cast of characters themselves. Quite the opposite, actually – Sidor brings the same talent for characterization and dialogue evident in their previous novels that I’ve reviewed. The dialogue is punchy and cinematic, well-suited for the fast-paced, pulp-style action that dominates most of the novel, and blends well with the small cast of main characters that populate the story. As a protagonist, Shawna Bright is an interesting character with a backstory that I’d like to see explored in future novels, especially given the masterful cliffhanger ending that Sidor concludes the novel with; and Nero IV acts as a delightfully evil antagonist, scheming and plotting and always with something even worse up his dictatorial sleeve. However, I was especially taken with two of the supporting cast in particular – both xenos that end up allies of Shawna during her adventure. Hotshot mercenary Bak-Irp was a really cool, gun-slinging mercenary that reminded me distinctly of Garrus from the Mass Effect series of games; with his quiet but deadly attitude and ability to kill zombies by the boat-load, his appearances were always enjoyable. Then there’s the mysterious and terrifying Too-ahka, a fur-coated xeno who seems unaffected by the zombie-making mold and is horrifyingly efficient as a cold-blooded killer, and who seems to become something of a friend to Shawna by the end of the novel.

Death System: A Zombicide: Invader Novel is a fast-paced, action-packed adventure of a novel that perfectly translates Zombicide: Invader boardgame from tabletop to page, and demonstrates S. A. Sidor’s full mastery of the setting and the pulpy, undead-infested nature of the boardgame. Engaging characters, an intriguing plot with plenty of back-stabbing, ambushes and deadly betrayals, and non-stop, zombie-killing action makes Death System a superb novel for those who like their zombie horror to be space-bound; and I look forward to Sidor’s next entry in the series.