The Altered

De: Maria DeVivo

Narrado por: Zane Boyer

Griffin King is an ordinary high school senior dealing with typical teenage issues—a bratty little sister, overbearing parents, an obnoxious best friend, and the unrequited love of his long-time crush. But when a virus suddenly infects a large portion of the population, Griffin soon finds himself on the opposite side of the proverbial horror story.

After months of roaming the broken landscape of the city as an infected person, a cure is found and a mass injection of antiserum is administered to the diseased, causing Griffin to become one of the Altered, a small group of "ex-infecteds" who have been cured, but changed. Now he must learn how to start his life anew—suppressing his need to consume human flesh, and living among an angry post-apocalyptic society where race, gender, and religion don’t matter anymore. Welcome to the new world. A world where people like him—people altered like him—are the minority.

©2020 Maria DeVivo (P)2024 Maria DeVivo

Teenage Zombie Angst

Griff is in for a tough time; as a teenager, a zombie, and an "altered." The zombie cure killed most but not all, including our protagonist. The altereds are in for even worse treatment than the zombies, and this is a sad tale. Told from the POV of Griff, you'll need to remember what it was like to be an angsty teen to really enjoy it.

I love me a twist on zombie stories

This reminds me a little of some of the newer zombie takes where the actual zombies are turned back to human or "cured" but this take kind of reminds me of Warm Bodies (the book not the movie) but minus the romance; where you're actually in the zombie's head. Its an interesting perspective. You go from a teen boys' typical angst, to a teen boy thrust into a zombie apocalypse in survival mode, to becoming a zombie, to a cured former zombie and the PTSD he has to cope with and becoming a lab rat. I really liked it and was actually looking for a book 2.