Credit: Hodder & Stoughton

At first glance, Outpost appears to be just another zombie apocalypse novel. A global pandemic has struck, turning the infected into slowly decaying, partially metal beings with interesting eating habits.

There are the usual scenes of riots for resources and infected humans attacking one another. But the main characters witness this from thousands of kilometres away, before they lose radio and television signals.

Rather than placing his characters in the classic city environment author Adam Baker has marooned his crew in the middle of the Arctic Ocean on an oil refinery platform.

They have no hope of rescue and have to make their own way home, if they can survive the Arctic winter. But then the contagion shows up on their doorstep.

The crew all work on the rig to escape the rest of the world, and they take drugs to escape the rig itself. The main character, Jane, tries to commit suicide in the first few pages.

As the story progresses, she predictably turns into a predator in order to survive. And given that she's a priest, the fact she'll turn a shotgun on a zombie is impressive (if slightly unbelievable).

You might not like the characters, but you'll keep reading in the hope that some of them survive. After all, they've brought something new to the zombie genre.