The Malaise is an end of the world dystopian story that is frighteningly all too easy to imagine.

The Western world is obsessed with technology all created by one company - Apple - oh wait, no. Razor Technology! One day a mysterious video pops up on everyone's Razorvision glasses, hours later a zombie/rage type phenomenon sweeps through the world turning normal loving people into crazed murderers. Now the few survivors must rebuild and live in this new world.

The zombie apocalypse trope admittedly is not a new one. However, I did find this one rather refreshing. For one thing, the survivors community is lovely. If there's one thing that seems to appear in nearly every other story it's the complete breakdown of society with communities struggling to work but New Windermere is a real utopia! It actually gives me hope that there could be a positive future if/when the real apocalypse happens.

The characters were all very enjoyable and pretty realistic. The main characters were quite well developed and I found myself truly caring about what happens to each character.

I do feel like the ending was really quite rushed and the third part of the book could have definitely been developed a bit more in my opinion. The ending is left open to a potential sequel and I for one, would definitely like to know what's going to happen next!

Thank you very much to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an eArc in exchange for an honest review

"The Malaise" is an apocalyptic dark fiction/horror story about the dangers of technology and autocracy. The basic premise is that it’s the near future (2038 is when we start), and the world’s tech is run by one man. One night in April, this tech launches a viral video that causes all of mankind wipe itself out. Anyone who watches the video will go daft and murder anyone in sight, and then kill themselves. The story follows a father and his baby daughter that survive the night in a quiet lake town in England. Along with a few other scant survivors, they inherit a world where all tech has now been turned off.

This book feels like a Black Mirror episode that didn’t get past the cutting room floor, with some later-stage Walking Dead elements thrown in. Some familiar ideas are preached: tech is bad, getting back to nature is good, and people will always be both good and evil. The messages are fine, but it’s nothing we haven’t considered before. Nothing really new here to get excited about.

The cover seems to want it push it as a horror novel, and that’s what initially attracted me to it, but it’s more of an apocalyptic story with lots of gory descriptions of death. Gore is fine, but it wasn't at all frightening. It felt like the author was pushing for graphic descriptions of murder and chaos, but too much gore without anything substantially terrifying behind its use feels a bit lazy.

The book is fine, there’s nothing much wrong with it - it’s competently written and concise - but there were more than a couple of instances where the thing everyone is looking for just happens to be the first thing they find. Convenient for storytelling purposes, but not for immersive purposes. Also, not a ton of new ideas here, but people new to the genre might enjoy it more than I did.

The Malaise by David Turton is a gripping dystopian mystery that weaves a story about technology, human interactions, and people's reliance on that technology and creating a world before and a world after. It truly has the reader questioning if technology has helped or hurt society. When one man is granted too much power and technology takes over, the fate of the world is at play.

The story focused more on the characters that survived and rebuilding a society rather than on the "zombies," which is different from the more traditional dystopian novels. I liked the characters and their storylines. The plot had me wanting to read and turn the pages faster to find out what would happen or why the event took place. The story is creepy in parts, but yet hopeful. The ending was a little too quick, but still very good and leaves it open to a possible sequel.

I also love the spooky cover. Good book overall.

WOW! Double up that WOW! What a great book. Make a cup of tea, throw on some comfy clothes, you will be a while! I read this book in one sitting! IT WAS SO GOOD! The author did a great job moving the story forward and building the suspense. Even the ending was a great ending...leaving it open for a sequel.
There was some downsides...this could be an EPIC book if the author added more details. More character development.
Further, the ending I thought was good, I thought a little unbelievable that two people who had never met, would plan a murder.
Overall, a great book. An easy read!

It's a good post-apocalyptic novel that takes place outside London. Mike, the main character, is a college professor of technology. Technology causes most of humans to kill each other. Well written and an easy read.