Is there any narrative structure more predictable than that of the classic zombie story? A small band of the few, the brave, the lucky fight to escape or to contain the mounting zombie threat. Our heroes’ numbers keep diminishing, and meanwhile, the shambling armies of the undead keep growing. Even if our heroes survive/clear/escape the quarantine zone, it’ll only be to discover that the zombie threat isn’t over.
Marry that to a shallow, mouthy college student protagonist, straight out of the wish-fulfilment school of character creation, whose on-again off-again love interest is dark, brooding, and intermittently an asshole, and you add the predictability quotient of pulpy urban fantasy to the predictability quotient of zombie plague.
[Plague Nation is a shambling zombie of a book]