Blog Tour: Mad World: Sanctuary by Samarie Provost Review & Excerpt

Mad World: Sanctuary by Samaire Provost
(Mad World, #2)
Release Date: August 30, 2012
Publisher: Createspace; 214 pages

The year is 2017, and the Black Plague infection has swept across most of the United States, leaving death and chaos in its wake. Martial law is the rule rather than the exception, with outbreaks cropping up when they're least expected. Alyssa and her friends must not only battle outbreaks of the disease, but also find themselves pursued by government agents – men and women determined to track them down at any cost.

Fleeing north to the fabled Sanctuary, Alyssa, Jacob, DeAndre, Caitlyn, Risa and Luke face disturbing ordeals and terrible tragedy as they encounter unbelievable situations in their struggle to reach safety. Using their skills and wits in their fight to survive against ever worsening odds, they weather hardship, betrayal, and the ever-present specter of death as they flee north, all the while vowing to protect one another – and most of all their precious 5-year-old Luke, from a world gone mad. 

I was extremely anxious to start this book after reading Mad World: Epidemic. Any zombie story sucks me in, and it is even better when you don't at first realize it'll be a zombie story. Which is why I had fallen in love with the first book in this series. In the second installment of Mad World, we are brought into a world five years after the epidemic has occurred. I was a little surprised at the big time gap, but in all honesty, it made sense. If none of the main characters die, why do you need to fill in all those years?

Sanctuary starts off fast pasted and doesn't stop at all during the whole book. It is an adrenaline rush and makes you have anxiety wondering what will happen next, but you cannot put this book down. I don't have a single complaint about this book at all. I loved seeing how the relationships had blossomed between Alyss and Jacob and DeAndre and Caitlyn. And how Luke seemed to really love and trust his parents so much.

I can pictures every different zombie attack scene in my head, and that makes this book so much more real to me. There are a few very sad moments in this book as well, but with the type of story that it is, it is to be expected. But it doesn't make any of them easy to read. In a way, I kind of expected the ending of this book, but not completely. I don't like it one bit, but it is a great transition into the third installment of this series. I just hope that there is hope for Luke, Alyssa and everyone else!

This second book, Sanctuary, just enforces my love for this series, and this author. This is definitely a must read for you shelves!! It is such a great story of love, fear and the strength people can find in the most dire of circumstances. Cannot wait for the third book!!!

Mad World: Sanctuary Excerpt:

Luke, meanwhile, had crept out of his hiding place and followed Tom into the barn, keeping to the shadows. First he hid behind a wheelbarrow filled with tarps; then, when Tom had entered the stall and closed the door, Luke had snuck into the open stall next to Tom, crawling behind some old hay. Trying not to sneeze, Luke had found a knothole and had settled in to watch.

Looking inside the hole, Tom was confronted with only darkness and a set of wooden stairs leading downward. He paused, as if listening for any sound. Nothing. He then appeared to make a decision. He would go down and look, check things out. He took the mallet he had hit Jake with. Slowly, quietly, he laid the door down open and began to descend into the darkness below.

Before Tom had gone down more than half a dozen steps, there was a low growling sound.

The skin on the back of Luke’s neck rose in goose pimples. He knew that sound.

Suddenly, he heard a loud scream, “AIEEEEE!!!!!!!!” and saw Tom scramble back up the stairs as fast as he could, clutching his arm, which dripped blood. Hot on his heels was a zombie. Its skin was such a dark grey it looked almost black. Its eyes were so opaque they looked milky. Its teeth were covered in black goo, and its leg had a chunk missing. This did not slow the creature down one bit, and it caught Tom before he could exit the stall. Tom screamed loudly again, the sound filling the barn: “AAAAAIEEEEE!!!!!!!” as the zombie pulled him backwards and they both fell to the ground.

Luke watched through the knothole, mesmerized. He had seen zombie attacks before, but never this close. He was only about five feet away from the horrible sight.

The zombie held Tom down and lowered its mouth to Tom’s neck. Tom tried to fight it, but it was lightning fast, clamping its mouth down hard and growling. Tom let out another, feebler scream, “Aaaiieeeee….!” that gurgled down to a frantic anguish.

Before even a minute had passed, Tom’s motions became feeble, as the blood drained out of him and pooled on the stall floor. The zombie tore off pieces of Tom’s neck and face and began eating them.

Luke observed all of this with a mixture of horror and fascination. But he realized that the zombie might come after him next, so he decided to creep out the way he had come. Crawling out from under the hay, he tried to be as quiet as he could, and tiptoed out of the stall. On his way out, in the nearly complete dark barn, he brushed against a shovel that was propped up against the wall next to the stall door, and it fell to the ground with a huge crash. Luke glanced back at the zombie; he could see the creature through the half-open stall door. The thing’s head came up abruptly at the sound and swung toward him blindly. As the clattering sounds faded, the zombie slowly rose from its haunches to its feet, swinging its head around, trying to locate the source of the sounds. It left the corpse of Farmer Tom and shambled a few steps toward the stall door.

Luke was frozen, watching this through the open door. He noticed the zombie did not seem to focus on him, but rather at the sounds of the shovel falling. Luke took several more steps, backward this time, all the while looking to see whether the beast had noticed him. As his foot scraped against the floor, the zombie’s head cocked, listening. Its dark grey face dripped blood from its mouth, its milky white eyes stared toward Luke, unseeing. But it was clear it was now hunting Luke by sound. And its brain was deadly focused on consuming any human he could. Luke told me later he felt sweat running down his back, and the hairs on the back of his neck stand upright in sheer terror. You might not think a boy of 5 would remember such things, but children are more impressionable than anyone else … and there are some things you just don’t forget. This was one of them.

Without a second thought, Luke turned and took off like a shot.

He ran for the barn door. He was so frightened, he couldn’t think. I had always told him that if he was in danger, he was to run, run like the wind, away from the danger. He could hear the zombie lurch out of the stall and come after him, following the sound of his running footsteps. Luke was terrified. His eyes were wide with fright as he ran. He wasn’t thinking at all, he was just running. He ran back the way he had come, through the woods, and kept running. The sun was almost gone and the long shadows scared him even more. He ran through the woods for several hundred yards, and then came out at a field of tall wild grasses. Without giving it a second thought, he ran. Through the field and beyond. He did not stop until well past sunset, he ran until it was pitch black and he had found a good hiding place.

Author Bio:
Born naked. Clothed and fed shortly thereafter by adoring parents who looked on in bemusement as their daughter became a reading, writing, free-spirited, feral, animal loving, bleeding-heart chocolate lover who laughs easily. Samaire Provost is a California writer of Young Adult novels. Her love of paranormal stories, odd plots, and unique tales as well as C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, E.A.Poe, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, and Stephen King has deeply influenced her writing.

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