“…And then I woke up.” These are the words that nearly every reader dreads to hear at the end of a story, suggesting as they do that the characters and situations the reader has just gotten attached to have been nothing more than a dream. But how about at the start of the story? Malcolm Devlin’s latest horror novel, And Then I Woke Up, explores the struggles of characters who have just awakened from an imagined reality and must reckon with their new understanding of the world and the consequences of actions they committed while living under a lie. The book, which came out last month, is the most unique take on a zombie apocalypse I have ever read and has a particularly poignant message for our times. Continue reading Review of And Then I Woke Up—Existential Zombies
Tag: Zombies
Review of Deathless Divide–Mad Scientists and Monstrosity
When zombies take the East Coast, it’s time to strike out for the West. Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland, which came out early last year, is the sequel to Dread Nation, a captivating alternate history that imagines a world where the Civil War was derailed by the rise of the restless dead and young Black girls are trained in combat to fend off the oncoming hordes. If you enjoyed the first book, you don’t want to miss this thrilling conclusion to the duology. Continue reading Review of Deathless Divide–Mad Scientists and Monstrosity
Review of The Living Dead—A Posthumous Zombie Novel
Death is not the end. George Romero, famed father of the zombie flick never quite got to lay out his full vision of the zombie apocalypse in film. Instead, he turned to writing and spent decades drafting and making notes for a grand zombie epic that wouldn’t be held back by budgets, producers, and the whims of Hollywood. Unfortunately, this magnum opus was left unfinished at the time of Romero’s death in 2017. That’s where Daniel Kraus came in. A life-long Romero fan and celebrated author (he recently co-wrote the novelization of The Shape of Water with Guillermo del Toro), Kraus sifted through all of Romero’s writings and notes, did an impressive amount of research, and worked to put together a finished novel that stayed true to Romero’s spirit. The result is The Living Dead by George Romero and Daniel Kraus, which came out from Tor on August 4. Continue reading Review of The Living Dead—A Posthumous Zombie Novel
Review of Dread Nation–Civil War Zombies!
When the dead start to rise on the battlefield at Gettysburg, the American Civil War is taken in a whole new direction. This is the premise of Justina Ireland’s unique new zombie tale, Dread Nation. This book has been on my radar since the beginning of the year, so as soon as it came out last month, I hopped on the waiting list to get the audiobook from the library. I love the idea of combining zombie horror with alternative history. Add in a badass teenage heroine who takes on zombies and institutionalized racism alike with her sharp-edged sickles, and I’m 100% sold! Continue reading Review of Dread Nation–Civil War Zombies!
Zombie Romance–A Trend I’m Not Sad to See Die
Tall, dark, and decaying? Yeah, that’s not my type. In the post-Twilight era, after the vampire genre had been worked almost to death, there was a rush to find the next hot creature for supernatural romance. A few years ago, zombies made a pretty serious bid for that prestigious position. Leading the way was Daniel Waters’ Generation Dead, published back in 2008, which quite cleverly presented zombies as the next marginalized group in our society—second-class citizens who are not protected by the law and who are feared and hated by the dominant group. When goth girl Phoebe falls in love with a zombie, she discovers social awareness along with the thrills of infatuation. Another popular one was Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion (2010) which was made into a rather successful movie in 2013. This book is told from the perspective of a zombie named R who bites off more than he can chew when he begins to fall for a human girl. Other books followed, including Lia Habel’s Victorian spin on the zombie romance genre, Dearly, Departed. But while I thoroughly enjoyed reading some of these books, the genre as a whole still squicks me.
Continue reading Zombie Romance–A Trend I’m Not Sad to See Die
The Zombie Literary Canon
So I’ve written before about the vampire literary canon, which granted has a bit more solid of a literary tradition. But with the rising popularity of zombies in TV shows like The Walking Dead and iZombie, as well as in the mildly uncomfortable new zombie subgenre of paranormal romance books, I figured that an examination of the literary history of these brain-eating undead was in order. While more popular with visual media like movies, video games and TV, zombies still have a strong literary presence, especially in recent decades. Below are some works that I consider to be part of the zombie literary canon.
World War Z–An Epic Zombie Tale
Zombies. In some ways they are my least favorite among the multitude of supernatural creatures—they don’t tend to have terribly interesting personalities, and the new trend of zombie romance is just far more disturbing than the classic vampire love stories. Nonetheless, zombies can be very interesting in what they represent. While vampires embody our complicated yearning for immortality and power, zombies represent our fear of death at a downright primitive level—the finality of death and decay, the simple meaninglessness of it, the shift from human to inhuman, and the loss of the self. Meanwhile the survivors of zombie pandemics fight for meaning, and humanity, and for living one more day. My latest read captures this struggle on an epic global scale: World War Z by Max Brooks. Continue reading World War Z–An Epic Zombie Tale