Book Review: Ex-Purgatory, by Peter Clines

The next episode in the superhero/zombie post-apocalypse.

Broadway Books, 2013, 336 pages

The fourth novel in Peter Clines' best-selling Ex series.

When he's awake, George Bailey is just an ordinary man. Five days a week he coaxes his old Hyundai to life, curses the Los Angeles traffic, and clocks in at his job as a handyman at the local college. But when he sleeps, George dreams of something more. George dreams of flying. He dreams of fighting monsters. He dreams of a man made of pure lightning, an armored robot, a giant in an army uniform, a beautiful woman who moves like a ninja.

Then one day as he's walking from one fix-it job to the next, a pale girl in a wheelchair tells George of another world, one in which civilization fell to a plague that animates the dead-and in which George is no longer a glorified janitor, but one of humanity's last heroes. Her tale sounds like madness, of course. But as George's dreams and his waking life begin bleeding together, he starts to wonder - which is the real world, and which is just fantasy?

( Agent Smith has them in the Matrix, and Los Angeles is still full of zombies. )

Verdict: You'll know if you'll like these books by whether the idea of superheroes and zombies sounds entertaining or stupid to you. Ex-Purgatory, the fourth book in the series, is as good as the third book and better than the first two. 7/10.

Also by Peter Clines: My reviews of Ex-Heroes, Ex-Patriots, Ex-Communication, and 14.

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