Book review: Headshot: One in the Gut by Matthew Siege

Ryan had always been a gamer, he had tried so many AR games, but none of them had been quite like Headshot. It was free to play, if you were willing to play a zombie that is. Who better to provide sport and populate the world with zombies than the ‘mindless masses’? The name of the game was to make it to the end of the week, taking down as many Survivors as you could. Death meant you couldn’t log in again until the servers reset, and each week you started right back at level one. The Survivors were those with money, the privileged few who could afford the enormous annual fee. Ryan had played the Beta, but now the game had gone live there was a whole new side to the game. He had always heard that this style of gaming was addictive, but there was more to this than an obsession, yes he wanted to win, to show there was a way to ‘win’ if you didn’t pay, but something else was happening, and it seemed he was central to it all, whether he wanted to be or not.

I have no shame in openly admitting that I really loved this book. Written in a very immersive first person narrative you get all the problems of being a zombie, but from the perspective of a human, travelling the post-apocalyptic game world and unlocking new features of the game. The gamer in me loved it, as did the reader. You don’t have to like LITrpgs to enjoy this book, it’s easily one of the better zombie based books I have read. Dare I say it, an epic drop!

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