Land of the Hoosier Dawn

A strange fog rolls over the town of Fogstow, turning everyone it touches into flesh-eating monsters...

Well, it does that, much, much later in the book anyways. This story suffers from a huge information dump in the first half. The author laboriously goes over every place in the town, and every citizen. It's very dry and boring. It takes forever to get into the actual meat of the story. This kind of upfront world-building is always frustrating, I prefer it paced against the advancement of the plot. I just don't care about the details of the lives of characters before they start being relevant.

Don't get me wrong, there are strong characters in this, or would be if told differently. This has a huge cast, but the main character is Police Chief Linton Derr, so most of the other character's stories intersect with him. The town is full of the usual good and bad types, and you'll be told about it. All of it.
There are just way too many side stories and plots going on, and the names started to blur together for me and it became too much.

When we hit around the halfway mark, right before some disgusting sex scenes for some reason, a fog rolls over the whole place and causes everyone it touches to be engulfed in pain and vomit and voids their bowels. It's really gruesome and finally gets the thing going. Errrr, eventually anyways. The story then goes back to a few side characters doing more disgusting sex stuff and then gets back to the horror story!

Yes, they all turn into zombies basically. The author makes his version of them and it's awesome the way they are. They drink from the river, finding it soothes the pain for a reason I'm sure you'll guess. They have long nails they get the urge to scratch and sharpen against things. They aren't mindless and don't lose their humanity and so suffer from the thoughts of needing to consume flesh. It's wonderful and almost worth the work it takes to get there.

There was a great horror story in here, it's just crushed under the weight of a huge information dump, unnecessary side stories, and it's just way too long for what the story it ends up finally telling is. This could have been an extremely effective short story or novella, it's just far too long as is.

Bring your patience with you if you decide to read this.