As Paul Tremblay books go, this one Survivor Song isn't my favourite. It's another one of those books that left me wondering what the point of it was. Survivor Song is a story about two women called Rams and Natalie who are trying to get to a medical clinic during a mutated rabies outbreak. Sounds fun, right?

Not so much, unfortunately. I think I would have enjoyed Survivor Song a lot more if it had taken place over a longer period of time. After finishing the book, I felt like I had been reading about one of those 24 hour horror situations. You know, like Bugs in Supernatural? Everything is horrible for a short period of time and is never really fixed, nor do you really get a proper conclusion.

I'm a bit disappointed in this book as I was expecting it to be more like A Head Full of Ghosts or The Cabin at the End of the World, where you don't really know what reality is any more and the books are slightly more open ending and open to interpretation. Survivor Song was a lot more straight laced and thus, not anything stand-out in the genre.

I did enjoy how topical it is, with the whole virus outbreak and all. So there's that.

If you're looking for a quick horror book about almost-zombies then sure, pick this one up. But I don't think it brings anything new to the genre and it's not on par with the rest of Tremblay's work.

Nothing like reading about a virus epidemic during a virus pandemic! Reading Survivor Song in the age of COVID-19 is quite surreal. There’s a scene taking place at a hospital that is eerily close to real life. The government’s emergency response, people in quarantine, the spread of misinformation through news, even the right-wing militia all make an appearance. The book takes place over the course of just a few hours so the story moves in real-time. It is a close up on the characters ala Cloverfield so we don’t get the full dimension of the virus epidemic but it’s intense. The infected people are not the shuffling zombies we usually see in movies, instead, they are fast and violent. There are some brutal scenes!

I felt that the main characters' dialogue feels too banter-y and the depth of their relationship is told rather than shown. Natalie's sarcastic responses undercuts the severity of their situation. Despite being a doctor, Ramola makes some puzzling decisions. The standout supporting characters are Luis and Josh, teenagers who believe they’re living in a zombie movie. Their interactions provided some levity, and a final interlude focusing on them is my favourite part of the book. Overall, Survivor Song is a notable addition to the zombie apocalypse horror literature and uncannily fitting for our time.

Perhaps not the best choice during a pandemic, but this time its a super-rabies epidemic sweeping through New England. Natalie is heavily pregnant, awaiting the return of her husband from a shopping trip and wondering whether they should have escaped to her parents' home while they could. Her best friend Ramola is a pediatrician in the local hospital, due to go on shift in the next day and getting prepared for the onslaught of cases.

The story follows what happens next, how they struggle to cope with getting Natalie to hospital and the birth of her child.

The book is well written, follows their stories and presents well-rounded characters. Thoroughly readable and makes you think about what humanity really is.

Thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for allowing me access to the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Let’s just get this out of the way - it is very weird reading a book about a deadly virus in 2020. Hopefully this doesn’t put too many people off reading it. Once we get past the overwhelmed hospitals which are a little too close to home, it becomes a bit easier to read - though maybe less enjoyable. It was very intense the whole way through - the book follows Ramola and Natalie over the course of a few hours and it’s very fast paced because of this, which means it’s quite a full on read as it just never stops. An enjoyable read but not as scary as I was expecting from the cover and description. A good quick read, but I prefer a more drawn out story.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

"In the coming days, conditions will continue to deteriorate. Emergency services and other public safety nets will be stretched to their breaking points, exacerbated by the wily antagonists of fear, panic, misinformation; a myopic, sluggish federal bureaucracy further hamstrung by a president unwilling and woefully unequipped to make the rational, science-based decisions necessary; and exacerbated, of course, by plain old individual everyday evil."

It could very well be a news article excerpt, right? Crazy!

Impeccable timing, neck-breaking pace, incredible writing.

'Survivor Song' is not a slow book - au contraire. Tremblay made sure to keep us (readers/listeners) on our toes. And when I say 'non-stop-action', I really mean it. This story won't give you a break!

I had an absolute blast reading this book.

Loved every bit of the female protagonists: Natalie (Nats) and Ramola (Rams).

If you plan on reading this one, I'd strongly suggest that you read it NOW.

Reading something centred around a pandemic, in the midst of a pandemic, is a weird feeling. Seeing the way people react in fiction to pandemics, after seeing actual real life reactions, is a weird feeling. Six months ago, I would have said some of the completely selfish choices made by characters in Survivor Song were unrealistic, but Tremblay writes about characters in a strange situation, pushed to and beyond breaking point, and right now it feels almost eerily accurate.

Natalie (Nats) and Ramola (Rams) are best friends, having met in college and remaining close as Nats moves in with, and then marries her boyfriend, Paul. But when their city goes into lockdown, when a rabies pandemic – spread by animals and humans – hits, there’s only one person the heavily pregnant Nats feels she can turn to.

Did I mention that, in this book, there is a pandemic?

People here, for the most part, seem a lot more sensible. The roads are quiet, people seem to be observing lockdown, and to try and curb the spread of rabies, bait packs are dropped.

For the most part, the story is told through Rams’ point of view, as the two women desperately try and get help for Natalie. Occasionally, we get an insight into Nats’ mind, as she makes recordings for her unborn child.

Rabies is a perfect explanation for a not-quite-zombie apocalypse. It presents more of a moral challenge than simply dealing with the undead. There’s constant hope for a cure, the knowledge these are real, living human beings, and the rate of full infection depends on where exactly subjects are bitten. Although they resemble zombies, Tremblay moves away from the more ingrained tropes of the genre by grounding the pandemic in something more real.

The infected aren’t the biggest threat here, and the tension underling the novel comes more from the people involved, the choices they make and the attempts to get the help they so desperately need.

I mentioned the selfish actions of the characters. This isn’t about whether they wear a mask or not (and people, please, wear a mask, okay?) but the characters have to make decisions about what to tell certain people, and they put others at risk by their actions. They justify it internally, in ways that make sense, and ways that make the reader uncertain about where they stand. Can you still root for someone who puts other, more vulnerable people at risk? It’s difficult, and Tremblay really plays on the moral quandaries facing the characters, while keeping us grounded in their predicament and able to emphasise with them.

It’s a tense, action-packed ride that I absolutely whizzed through, and one that feels shorter than its 300-odd pages. There are some honestly funny moments alongside touching, heart wrenching scenes and tense, pulse-racing snippets of horror. It’s horror at its best, giving you characters you greatly care for before ripping out your heart, squashing it underfoot, and making attempts to carefully put it back in.

My thanks to Titan Books for a digital edition via NetGalley of ‘Survivor Song’ by Paul Tremblay in exchange for an honest review.

Well, that was intense!

‘Survivor Song’ opens with this statement: “THIS IS NOT a fairy tale. Certainly it is not one that has been sanitized, homogenized, or Disneyfied, bloodless in every possible sense of the word, beasts and human monsters defanged and claws clipped, the children safe and the children saved, the hard truths harvested from hard lives if not lost then obscured, and purposefully so. This is not a fairy tale.”

New England has been placed on lockdown in order to stem the wildfire spread of a rabies-like virus. Unlike traditional rabies, the incubation period is extremely short and without the immediate administration of the vaccine, it is 100% fatal. The hospitals are overwhelmed and civilisation is breaking down. Staying inside is the only way to keep safe.

Yet when paediatrician Ramola (Rams) Sherman receives a call from her friend Natalie (Nats) she has to respond. Natalie’s husband is dead, she’s eight months pregnant, and oh yes she’s been bitten. They only have a very narrow window to get Natalie to hospital for the vaccine. Even then there is the question as to whether they were in time.

They have to go to another medical facility in order for the child to be delivered safely but it’s a race against time as in the chaos the journey is fraught with dangers. Ramola has to also monitor Natalie closely for any signs of the virus.

I opened this novel with the intention of reading a few chapters but once started, it proved impossible to put down as its main events take place over a very short period of time and as said above, it was very intense.

Even though this is a strong visceral bio-horror there are moments of levity, much of it provided by a couple of teens that they encounter as well as an ongoing debate about whether they are in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. However, as with ‘28 Days Later’, this isn’t about zombies.

As Nats reflects in a section written to her unborn child: “I was kind of joking when I said zombies, but not joking at the same time. They’re sick people and they turn delusional and violent and they bite, but it’s easier to say zombie than “a person infected with a super rabies virus and no longer capable of making good decisions.””

While this may not be a fairy tale, there is a thread throughout of fairy tales including Grimms’ Fundevogel (The Foundling Bird), that Ramola adapts and recites during a key event that stresses the bonds of friendship between the women.

While focused on an event involving a limited outbreak of a virulent rabies strain, there is clearly an echo of our current situation with the COVID-19 pandemic and attendant lockdown, making this an even more timely novel.

This was my first experience of Paul Tremblay’s writing and was impressed by his focus on characterisation, coupled with a strong storyline and tight timeline that markedly increased the tension. I plan on checking out his other works in the near future.

Highly recommended.

“THIS IS NOT a fairy tale. Certainly it is not one that has been sanitized, homogenized, or Disneyfied.”
Tremblay warns you right from the beginning that what you are about to read isn’t going to be yet another happily-ever-after fable where the heroes (or in this case heroines) overcome adversity, kill the wicked witch and survive unscathed. Survivor Song is, at its heart, a love story – a wife’s love for her husband, a mother’s love for her unborn child, the love of close friends for each other – but it is messy, difficult love that requires effort and sacrifices.

In modern day Massachusetts, and new and horrifically virulent epidemic of the rabies virus has broken out, overwhelming the feeble efforts of an unprepared government to curtail its spread. Heavily pregnant Natalie runs for help to her old friend Ramola, a British paediatrician, and the pair get swept up in the response to the epidemic, leaving them to witness just how quickly things can fall apart.

The pace of novel is handled masterfully, from the rushed, panicked attacks where you barely have time to realise what’s going on, to the interminable stretches of nothing that wrack your nerves and leave you anxious for the next piece of action. Natalie’s “hey-in-the-event-I-die” messages to her unborn baby add to the steadily growing sense of trepidation.

At this point, I’d like to ask Paul Tremblay to pick some lottery numbers for me, as the story is so prescient as to seem that he has a crystal ball revealing future events. The response of the fictional US government, with a president “unwilling and woefully unequipped to make the rational, science-based decisions necessary” in “a country where science and forethought are allowed to be dirty words, where humanity’s greatest invention – the vaccine – is smeared and vilified by narcissistic, purposeful fools…” mirrors the response of the real USA now to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

This may not be a fairy tale, but it is a fantastic story, well-written. Don’t be surprised if a film adaptation crops up in the very near future.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Paul Tremblay has been one of the fastest rising stars of horror fiction over the last few years, and this new book will do his reputation no harm at all. The action takes place over just a few hours in the midst of an outbreak of a mutated rabies strain that is bad news for all concerned. It is fast and focused, with attention laser-tight on the two women at the heart of the story. There’s huge jeopardy and a gruelling climax, supporting characters who are brave and fearless, and others who are misguided and wrong (but not just broad brush evil bad guys), and that relentless pace, as the clock ticks down on [SPOILER], but the absolute core of the book is the relationship between Rams and Natalie. Between the action, Tremblay sketches in the history of their friendship, and it is one you will believe in utterly. Of course, that just raises the stakes even higher as we breathlessly career towards the ending scenes, which are, uh, intense.

This is a juggernaut of a book, highly recommended. And look! I got through this whole review without mentioning any real world pandemics that might have been going on while I was reading it!

Reading this during a pandemic was a choice. This felt real considering the real life pandemic. Although obviously different. This mention of healthcare workers being overworked and not having proper protective gear. Something I would see regularly online. The Government enforcing lockdown. Did Paul Tremblay travel to the future to write this book?

Since I had an e-arc of this I can’t tell you how long each chapter was, but they felt too long. As I’ve mentioned before long chapters slow me down. If it feels like it is taking forever to get through a book my mind shuts off. Which is stupid.

For some reason I feel like I would have preferred this as an audiobook. Which sounds crazy as it’s a horror set during a pandemic. This definitely gave off an eerie experience that would be heightened by the audiobook.

Natalie recording messages for her unborn baby got me a little. It’s heartbreaking to be that close to the birth and fear not surviving. I can’t imagine what she felt mentally while recording each message.

I found myself getting cored halfway through. Which is strange as the second half of the book had more “action”. But it wasn’t keeping me interested. I just felt like I wanted it to be over.

I’m sad that overall I didn’t enjoy this. It had a strong start that sadly didn’t stay strong for me. But I can see why others would love this. Maybe if I ever get a chance to listen to the audiobook my opinion may change.

I’ve read other books by this author and thought they were just okay, not nearly as good as other people seem to think. But the blurb made me really want to read this. This is a fantastic book and has completely changed my so-so opinion of the author. I now have to catch up on his back catalogue. I love dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction. There are so many possibilities. The world doesn’t exactly end in Survivor Song but it comes pretty close. I knew I was going to love the book after I raced through the first few pages and intense opening of the book. What I love about this book is that it focuses on Ramola and Natalie. A lot of books in this genre tend to focus on quite a big cast of characters. This made Survivor Song stand out from other similar books. There are some horrific moments in the book as society starts to break down and people become overwhelmed by fear and suspicion but the focus of the book is Ramola’s determination to save Natalie’s unborn baby and Natalie’s determination not to give into the rabies infection coursing through her veins until she gives birth. The ending of the book made me cry a lot. This is a brilliant book.

I read this in one sitting, an extremely tense and highly emotional race against time, set against an apocalyptic backdrop with some truly absorbing characters.

A timely read given we are facing down a pandemic currently, however don't assume that you know what you will get from this story, often surprising and unexpectedly realistic this is a brilliant read. Once you pop you won't be able to stop.

"This is not a fairytale. This is a song"

Beautifully melodic it is too.

Highly recommended.

In this book we are dropped in Massachusetts in the middle of a pandemic (fast acting Rabies!). With hospitals swarmed by patients there is little hope once bitten. Natalie is heavily pregnant and after her husband is killed and she is bitten she knows she needs to act fast. Fortunately she has a friend who is a doctor - Ramola Sherman, together they must fight to get to a hospital as soon as possible to get a vaccine which is Natalie's only hope. However it has become a different world outside and getting to the hospital and staying alive aren't as easy as you think. 

This book for me started off very slowly, although it is the middle of a pandemic it just took me a while to get into the setting and really get a feel for the characters. However as the story continued and the stakes got higher I definitely became more gripped and quickly flew through the remaining pages to find out what happened. 

I think the main issue for me is that nothing was really shocking, I pretty much expected everything and nothing was really a plot twist. Although this didn't ruin the story for me it certainly didn't push it up to the 5 star mark. I do think this book will definitely be terrifying for some readers as it is quite a realistic pandemic book. If this book would have come out a year ago I think it would have just been an ok book but now seeing that this is indeed a very realistic situation it suddenly made the story a whole new level of scary. 

Overall I would say this book is ok, its nothing crazy but it is definitely an enjoyable read that picks up toward the end. It is certainly a realistic story especially in current times. I would recommend this if you're after a quick read that is a bit scary as it hits quite close to home!

Releasing a book about a pandemic during the middle of a real pandemic is a bold move but one that Paul Tremblay as taken. Although there are some parallels between what is happening in the world today and those within the pages of Survivor Song, they are not enough to make the book off putting. We may be stuck indoors most days as there is a real threat outside, but at least that threat is not a new strain of fast working rabies that turns people rabid in just an hour.

Natalie is 8 months pregnant and feels every moment of it. If being tired and heavy were not enough, she is also living in the middle of a pandemic. Her husband and she are hiding away in their remote New England homestead with only the news for company. It appears that a virulent strain of rabies is on the loose that is turning both animals and humans rabid at great speed. When a stranger comes to the door things do not look good. Natalie has just been bitten and must get to the hospital as fast as she can. Perhaps her doctor friend Rams can help? Time is ticking.

Song is one of those horror novels that sets off like a train and never stops. Events open during a pandemic and we are only given a few pages to get to know Natalie before her life is changed forever. Now it is a race against time to save her and the baby. The book is a two header; although the major event happens to Natalie, it is Rams who is given the lion’s share of the perspective. This works well as she is the healthy partner and can describe events in a rational manner. The fact that she is also a medical professional means that we get a great insight into what may be happening to Natalie and the baby.

Although focused on just two characters, Tremblay does not prevent us from learning more about the wider world. He uses this pandemic to explore how the citizens of New England and America would react in such a situation and the answer is not brilliantly. Whilst the real-world events of today have shown that many people do keep calm and carry on, those in Song are just as likely to panic and rush to the hospital. It is safe to say that Tremblay does not have must respect for certain types of people that make the problem worse, rather than better.

If you divorce yourself from our reality and instead focus on the story, there is a lot to recommend in Song. The central relationship a powerful one as two old friends do whatever they can to survive. The added element of a pregnant women really increases the tension. It can be a little unnerving to put someone so vulnerable at risk, but sometimes that is what horror is all about.

To make a book scary, you are going to need the horrific elements and they are in abundance here. This is based on real fears, not the fantastical. You can imagine a disease like this being exposed to people. It is the right side of reality to feel more like medical horror, than a zombie novel, although some of those tropes do make it into the book. Essentially Natalie and Ramola are on a horrific road trip and when they hit bottlenecks along the way, things turn nasty.

The action and horror occur over several set pieces in the book, but it never overshadows the core relationship in the book that is the foundation. Without the Natalie and Rams doubleheader, there is no horror. We need to care about their plight for the fear to grip us. Tremblay does a brilliant job of drawing us into their world. We want them to succeed, even if it feels there is no way that this is possible.

Survivor Song is a thrilling horror book that also has heart. The relational dynamic is key for the horror to work. Within its pages you not only get scares and character development, but an interesting view on how certain people in society react to a pandemic. If you have the stomach for it, there are some interesting parallels to our own situation. Thankfully, the world that Tremblay creates is different enough from our own that the terrors remain on the page and should not make it into your nightmares.

Horror is usually felt to be the weird pushing into the ordered world we are living in bringing with it chaos. Every now and then through the weird magic of publishing a book that was written months or even years before today arrives in a way to really capture the zeitgeist. And 2020 has been already pretty much a horror story in the making so far. Reading Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay I got actual shivers of recognition that the world I NOW live in rang so familiar and true and yet this book makes things even worse.

The United States is being touched by a strange virulent disease. Initially spread by animals it has crossed into humans. It presents itself as a fast-acting version of rabies. Where usually symptoms take days to appear this version transforms a human being in only a few hours from their normal personality into an unpredictable violent person who will want to bite you to pass the virus on. Natalie is heavily pregnant and awaiting her husband to arrive back from the store where panic-buying and queues are the norm as the state moves into lockdown. But just as the shopping arrives, they are attacked by an infected stranger – Paul and the attacker are soon dead while Natalie is bitten. She calls one of her oldest friends Ramola a paediatrician who is about to start emergency shifts at a hospital in crisis. Ramola knows the power of the disease that her friend has been exposed to and so they start a trip across town to hospital and are about to find out how dangerous the world has become.

I suspect all of us will soon find the early world Tremblay describes as chillingly familiar. From panic buys to doctors complaining of a lack of PPE and even conspiracy theorists saying this is all deep state activity it is almost like the last few months on steroids. I have been laughingly saying all future disaster tales will be judged by 2020 – this tale hits the mark perfectly. Some readers may not yet feel this is a good time to re-experience the early days of lockdown. But crucially this is an excellent horror story and that is powerfully accomplished that if you can get to it you’re in for a dark treat of storytelling.

Right at the heart of it all are the two friends known as Rams and Nats to each other. Natalie is foul mouthed, sarcastic, and funny – a lover of YA dystopias. Rams is a British-born quite organised and level-headed yet fiercely loyal friend. You can see how both deeply care about each other and yet get plunged into such a horrible situation. Knowing the potential risks makes Ramola go far beyond her usual professional boundaries. Despite it all their conversations together are often funny, warm, and enjoyable – you’ll care for these two women alone in a very very strange world. Making more poignant are voicemail recordings Nats decide to make for her unborn child just in case she can’t get to the medicine she needs – this reveals a lot more going on behind the brusque exterior she normally presents and really makes us invested in the duo’s fate.

Driving the horror is the pacing. The story starts with the attack on Natalie and Paul and then we are running really only through a few hours as the friends race to get Natalie the treatment she needs. The pace is relentless, and every pit stop along the way presents a new challenge be it officialdom, the scared or the infected. Tremblay has created that familiar weirdness of normally busy streets suddenly empty but here lurk dangers. The infected (despite what Nats and others claim) are not zombies – they can have higher function, use tools and machines but all are dangerous. There is a huge atmosphere of things watching (human and other) from the side lines and shadows deciding when is the best time to attack. There is never a moment to rest and in fact things just increasingly worsen leading to a memorable and heart wrenching finale as the duo make a last desperate bid for freedom.

If you can set aside a nervousness about the resemblance to current events you’ll find this an expertly crafted horror story. It brilliantly captures friendship, love and loss in an eerie and dangerous world where the future is not certain. It could easily have been just a gory familiar tale of apocalypse but the humanity of many of the characters we meet in dangerous situations is what makes this standout. I ended up reading this in pretty much one sitting it was that compulsive so one I highly recommend.

“This is not a fairy tale. Certainly it is not one that has been sanitized, homogenized, or Disneyfied, bloodless in every possible sense of the word, beasts and human monsters defanged and claws clipped, the children safe and the children saved, the hard truths harvested from harsh lives if not lost then obscured, and purposefully so.”

I have to admit when I requested Survivor Song I wasn’t sure I was the kind of person who can read about an out of control infectious disease whilst in the middle of a pandemic. Why would I need to read fiction about such a thing when we were living it? However, the premise of the book and my love of hopeless end of the world novels were both too much of a pull to resist.

What a book! Tremblay’s writing is in turns perceptive and humorous. It’s eerie echoes of the current situation could easily have become overwhelming, and there were times where the pit of fear in my stomach was present, but then Nat would make or sarcastic quip or some other character would do something amusing and it would pull me out of the despair.

The dark humour and the powerful nature of the friendship between Ramola (Rams) and Natalie (Nats) are ever present throughout the novel and are just one of many reasons why I ploughed through Survivor Song in just one day.

New England has been locked down to stop the spread of a super infectious strain of the rabies virus. Within an hour of transmission, it’s victims are violent and the hospitals are struggling to cope. A lack of PPE and training means the staff are quickly becoming overwhelmed without taking into consideration the members of the public who are in a panic and think the slightest little thing is a symptom of the virus.

The only way to stay safe from the virus is to stay safe but when Rams receives a call from her best friend, she knows she has to do something. Nat’s husband is dead, Nat herself has been bitten, and she is just days away from giving birth.

A quick warning here, Tremblay is not one to shy away from horrific images. The death of Natalie’s husband is particularly brutal. Also, animal lovers beware. The rabid animals are utterly terrifying but the descriptions of how some of them are dispatched is not the faint hearted.

The book begins with Nats waiting for her husband Paul to come home from getting essential groceries. Nats is clearly worried about him and whilst she is waiting she rereads a Facebook post about the disease and the comments placed below it. The comments are very much like you would expect, there are those who are gung-ho about the situation and those who wants to bury their head in the sand and believe it isn’t happening.

“Headache and flu-like symptoms but it gets soooo much worse and you go crazy, and you get weird and violent and you attack people and you’re fucked and everyone is fucked because there is no cure.”

Nats is recording audio entries on an app on her phone for her child to hear at a later date.

When Paul gets home, Natalie helps him bring some of the groceries in but then she hears an awful sound.

“The steps are hurried, quickly approaching the house, yet the rhythm is all wrong. The rhythm is broken. There’s a grinding lurch, two heavy steps, then a hitching correction, and a stagger, and a drag.”

Before long the intruder has killed Paul and Nats has been bitten and is fleeing for her life.

“This is not a fairy tale this is a song.”

There were many times throughout the book where there were clear similarities with the situation the world is currently facing with Covid-19.

“The heat will be blamed for the outbreak. There will be scores of other villains, some heroes too. It will be years before the virus’s full phylogenetic tree is mapped, and even then, there will continue to be doubters, naysayers, and the most cynical political opportunists. The truth will go unheeded by some, as it invariably does.”

Also,

“In the coming days conditions will continue to deteriorate. Emergency services and other public safety nets will be stretched to their breaking points exacerbated by the wily antagonists of fear, panic, misinformation; a myopic, sluggish federal bureaucracy further hamstrung by a president unwilling and woefully unequipped to make rational, science-based decisions necessary; and exacerbated of course, by plain old individual evil. But there will be many heroes too, including ones who don’t view themselves as such.”

Another quote that felt pertinent was the following:

“It will burrow, digging in like a nasty tick; it will migrate; and it will return all but encouraged and welcomed in a country where science and forethought are allowed to be dirty words, where humanity’s greatest invention – the vaccine – is smeared and vilified by narcissistic, purposeful fools (the most dangerous kind, where fear is harvested for fame, profit, and self-esteem), almost ten thousand people will have died.”

One of the things that lightens the load is the easy banter which exists between Nats and Rams.

“When one says one is not trying to be a dick, it generally implies the opposite. ‘

Natalie laughs. ‘I can’t believe you’re calling a rabies exposed preggo a dick. That’s gotta go against your Hippocratic Oath.”

Theirs is not the only noteworthy friendship in the book and there are two characters I would love to devote more time to, but I don’t want to give away any spoilers. Suffice to say I loved them.

Survivor Song is a well-paced, riveting and emotive story not to be missed.

Startlingly prescient pandemic novel combines rich characterisation with a page-turning cinematic feel.

Survivor Song was written before the coronavirus pandemic: this feels inconceivable. Within the first few pages, we’re plunged into an all-too-familiar scene from the confusion of lockdown. What does the government guidance even mean? Should we listen to everything we hear on Facebook about the virus? There’ll be several hours’ worth of queues at the grocery store, and our protagonist – Natalie – has already stress-eaten all the candy in the house. Tremblay’s novel places us in a nightmare vision of 2020, in which New England is caught up in a 28 Days Later-like “rage virus”, and we’re in the twitchy-curtained first few days of the outbreak.

The premise is utterly irresistible, and Tremblay grabs his reader by the throat. Natalie is heavily pregnant, waiting in a darkened house for her furloughed husband Paul to return from the store. The tension builds up: from the post on a message board that “This isn’t rabies. This is something knew” (a stark statement demonstrating Tremblay’s pitch-perfect mastery of tone, reminiscent of his short story Swim Wants To Know If It’s As Bad As Swim Thinks); to Natalie’s determination to keep the house lights off; and all the way to her utter dread when Paul makes too much noise on his return. When we finally hear the lurching footsteps on gravel – a man on the doorstep vocalising strangely, coughing and contorting – we’re already immersed. In an utterly cinematic opening sequence, Paul is dead (an image from nightmares: “the boneless slack with which his head lolls and dangles demonstrates beyond doubt that his neck doesn’t work anymore, will never work again”), Natalie is bitten, and she’s fled the house.

This breakneck pace continues throughout. Natalie is constantly on the move, her bite a ticking clock; the need to secure prophylactics and an urgent caesarean takes her to best friend (and doctor) Ramola. The two women career to a local hospital, swamped with bite patients and the worried well – into an ambulance just as the paramedic is shot dead – off to another hospital, intercepted on the way by paramilitary pet-killing squads, two jumpy teens on bikes with makeshift weapons, a fleet of buses carrying pregnant women and newborns to safety… it’s testament to Tremblay’s skill that the plot feels utterly inexorable throughout, no scene or paragraph wasted. This is a page-turner in the truest sense of the word.

It’s also difficult to describe a book like this without using the phrase: “like watching a film”, and Survivor Song certainly contains scenes which will feel familiar from the (dare I say it) zombie apocalypse genre. We can recognise the echoes of “it’s quiet… too quiet” in the beautiful portrait of a deserted road, “leaves skittering like mice”, and know from the urgent coded tannoy messages about violent combative individuals that the infected will shortly break onto the protagonists’ hospital floor. The action, however, never feels cliché: Tremblay treads a constant line between our expectations of the genre and his ability to convey actual nerve-shredding chaos in his depictions of a hospital overrun, the infected taking on a gun-toting not-so-tough-now local militia, and a “rage virus” scenario in a country both armed and paranoid. His “zombies” are absolutely terrifying, their random insistent vocalisations reminiscent of the speech virus in the film Pontypool, their violent hydrophobia giving Ramola and others a neat way to detect how well Natalie is (or isn’t). This light hand with the genre tropes works extremely well when we encounter Josh and Luis, two horror-movie-savvy teenagers whose early grasp of the situation (bantering: “this is the part of the zombie movie when the heroes team up with randos”) eventually turns heartbreaking with the realisation they’re in Natalie and Ramola’s story and won’t survive it: “It’s fucking obvious now. You and me aren’t the heroes. We’re the randos, yeah?”)

This deftness extends to the characterisation of the two protagonists, Natalie and Ramola. Tremblay lets us get to know them by their desires and dreams, from Natalie’s pre-pandemic insistence she didn’t want to die for the baby (“No Children of Men bullshit for us), to Ramola’s relationship with her parents (a beautifully pitched couple from South Shields, “a right mess, innit… be safe, love”). Natalie speaks to her unborn child throughout the novel in an audio log that allows her to be a more fully-realised character than the “incubator” she was afraid of becoming; it’s a particularly difficult feature of the narrative that, as she loses her humanity while the baby inside her remains capable of being saved, she gradually becomes the plot device she so feared.

It’s this nuanced portrayal of humanity that marks out all Tremblay’s novels. While Survivor Song wasn’t written with the coronavirus pandemic in mind, there’s so much about it that’s utterly relatable, particularly his depiction of emotional responses. Ramola sees her own humanity reflected back at her in the people crowding to get to safety: “it’s a someone-please-see-me-and-help-me plea; everyone’s face shows confusion mixed with terror and incredulity, and perhaps most frightening, an odd look of recognition/resignation”. It’s easy in the genre to rely on crowds as “the mob”, but this novel shies away from that: “They plead and they are confused and angry and afraid. Desperation and realization lurk within their collective voices. They don’t understand why or how this is happening, why it is that their personal emergency is not more important than anyone else’s; why no one is out here helping them.”

As the choices made define an individual, Ramola has to make a lot of hard ones. We’re warned at the start that “this is not a fairy tale. Certainly it is not one that has been sanitised…” and this holds true throughout most of the book, which is full of startlingly abrupt deaths and changes in circumstance. Ramola is put on the spot by Natalie, has to agree to raise her unborn child, and the awfulness of this position (Ramola never wanting children) is given full weight in the text. Ramola increasingly violates medical ethics and makes devastatingly dangerous and selfish choices in order to give Natalie’s baby the best possible chance of being born: towards the end, the reader’s point of view is breathtakingly pitted against Ramola’s as she lies to get Natalie strapped into a bus of pregnant women and newborns just as she begins to “turn”. Given the novel’s uncompromising penultimate image of the two protagonists, I couldn’t help but feel let down by the epilogue, which seemed to offer a jarring “happy ending” at odds with the satisfying bleakness of Tremblay’s world. Others, however – after a bleak and violent helter-skelter of a novel, particularly as our world deals with its own pandemic – might appreciate the tonal rest.

Survivor Song offers a vision of a pandemic in which “emergency services and other public safety nets will be stretched to their breaking points, exacerbated by the wily antagonists of fear, panic, misinformation; a myopic, sluggish federal bureaucracy further hamstrung by a president unwilling and woefully unequipped to make the rational, science-based decisions necessary; and exacerbated, of course, by plain old individual everyday evil.” But the rabies-alike virus is so virulent and fast-acting it contains itself after “almost ten thousand people [in New England]… have died”. Readers can draw their own comparisons and contrasts; this is a timely and deeply readable novel which deserves a far wider audience than the “genre” category it falls into. Tremblay’s writing is spare but beautiful, offering both spot-on dialogue (“Don’t patronise me. Actually, do patronise me”) and gems of description, like this rabid dog tearing down the road into the sunset, “triumphantly barking in full throat, running so fast it could be floating”. Effortlessly blending zombie/outbreak tropes with rich characterisation, he succeeds in putting a tight, personal focus on an extremely cinematic disaster.

Have you ever given any thought to pre-exposure rabies vaccination? As you travel at a safe distance alongside Ramola and Natalie it may very well cross your mind, probably more than once. You see, this timeline is pretty bitey.

Natalie is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. She’s 38 weeks pregnant. Her husband has just been murdered. By a zombie. She’s been bitten by the zombie. And that’s just the beginning of her story.

Natalie, A.K.A., Nats, A.K.A., Rabies Yoda

Strengths:
* Has read all YA novels featuring an apocalypse, so she’s probably absorbed some useful survival tips
* Fluent in sarcasm

Weaknesses:
* Was very recently bitten by an infected person
* Grieving the death of her husband, so there’s potential for distraction

Pre-apocalypse attitude to apocalyptic scenarios: the system will definitely fail.

Now Ramola, a paediatrician and Natalie’s friend, is in a race against time to seek medical treatment for Natalie and her unborn child before it’s too late. If it’s not already.

Ramola, A.K.A, Rams, A.K.A., Doctor Who

Strengths:
* Doctor
* Loyal to her friends

Weaknesses:
* Bad liar
* She’s consistently within biting range of someone who is infected

Pre-apocalypse attitude to apocalyptic scenarios: “Life finds a way.”

With the story more ‘The Walking Dead’ than ‘Zombieland’, you know early on that you’re not here for the laughs. There’s going to be blood, gore and frothing at the mouth.

The first kill happens early; props to the author for killing off their namesake! Poor Paul never had a chance (not a spoiler - it’s in the blurb) and “from here on out, anything can and will happen.”

This is a stressful read. The kind of stressful where, whenever Natalie wanted to check her temperature I wanted to check my blood pressure. What can I say? Paul Tremblay books are stressful.

Okay, so maybe this is only the second one I’ve read but the first one I read was ‘The Cabin at the End of the World’ and I own the rest, so that counts as somewhere adjacent to being an authority on the subject, doesn’t it? It’s like how I intuitively know that John Marrs is going to bring terrifying women into my life and Courtney Summers is going to devastate me with the ugliest of ugly cries.

These zombies -

“There are no zombies! This is not the apocalypse! You must stop saying that. It’s not helping.”

Okay, technically not zombies. Even though that’s what they’re called for most of the story. They’re infected with rabies, but not your garden variety rabies. This strain has seriously levelled up!

All of the biting aside, this is a story about friendship. Doctor Who struggles to maintain her confidence in her ability to save her friend but she’s going to do everything in her power to ensure Rabies Yoda survives the worst day of her life. Rabies Yoda trusts Doctor Who with her life (literally) and that of her soon to be born child.

I found it interesting to observe, from far enough away that I couldn’t be bitten, the different ways characters coped with what may or may not be the apocalypse. Some were determined and focused on their goal and some were more emotional. Conspiracy theorists came out to play while others tried to sort through misinformation for snippets of facts that could mean the difference between life and death. Then there was this stellar coping mechanism …

“It would be easier to pretend they are in a zombie movie. He will still pretend.”

I’m with denial guy! Even though there’s a lot of ‘everything’s going to hell in a hand basket’ going on, there’s still enough time left to discuss the important things in life. Like what movie everyone loved but you and what Disney’s problem is with mothers.

I found Josh and Luis fairly interchangeable but really warmed to them, despite their insistence on annoying me with their constant companion, the catchphrase “You are the bad.” I actually became more emotionally invested in their lives than with Doctor Who and Rabies Yoda’s.

I absolutely loved the inclusion of an asexual character; this was never going to be the focus of the story but its mere mention made my heart happy.

For those who need to know ahead of time, rabid animals were most definitely harmed within the pages of this story. So were rabid humans. It was bound to happen and although I usually avoid stories where animals die, this story wouldn’t have been believable if it wasn’t included.

On reading about a potential apocalypse during our own pandemic: It’s weird. Some passages are so prescient that they could easily be written about our current reality. If I’d read this book in 2019 I would have had an entirely different reading experience:
* I would have had to Google what an N95 was. Pre-COVID I was blissfully unaware of both their name and importance.
* I wouldn’t have nodded at some of the scenarios that now feel familiar rather than fiction.
* I wouldn’t have been wondering if the people I met here also encountered toilet paper hoarders.

To add to the ambience of my reading experience today, the sounds outside (or lack thereof) were eerily appropriate. The birds that usually chatter and chase one another through the neighbourhood almost entirely disappeared. It was hard not to wonder if they might know something I don’t. Hopefully they’ll come back tomorrow and their behaviour today isn’t actually a harbinger of doom.

“Sassafras and lullabies.”

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book. I’m rounding up from 4.5 stars.

Thanks to Netgalley and Titan Books for allowing me the opportunity to read Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay.

The story starts in Massachusettes where people and animals have been biten and contracted the Rabies virus. This virus has however mutated and is rapidly affecting the hosts, leading to a viral pandemic and the chaos that comes with that. We meet Natalie and Ramola who are friends, and over a relatively short period of time, we silently watch them fight for survival.

I have always found myself veering towards apocalyptic stories and this one did not disappoint. This book felt slightly different however and it may be due to our current on going situation, but I felt this story was much more relatable - lack of PPE and protection for medical staff, the public confused about what they should do and political concerns.

I really found myself flying through this book, I felt every minute of the journey. The danger and fear felt by all the characters was palpable and I found myself holding my breath at times.
The power of friendship and trust was resounding throughout this story and actually quite emotional.

Thanks Paul Tremblay for writing such a brilliant read, this one will stick with me for a long time. I'll also never leave my front door open again while bringing in my shopping!!

This is my first Paul Tremblay but I've been recommending A Head Full of Ghosts for ages (and will probably read that next thanks to this one!!)

I keep double checking that this is actually a 300+ page book because it felt like I've read it in an hour - the action starts on the first page and continues at breakneck speed throughout the entire book. The "zombie virus spreading through the population" trope has been done to death (hehe) this past decade, but somehow Tremblay manages to bring something fresh to the table. I think Nat and Rams are where this manifests itself the most, they're both totally unforgettable and the epitome of strong female leads with a healthy female friendship connecting them. I absolutely loved the combination of growing terror and increased tension as they raced across the state with Nat's bite. Tremblay also doesn't skimp on describing blood and gore so this is not for the squeamish!

4/5!