Roundup Reviews: Blood, Brains, and Books, October 15, 2010
Oct 15, 2010Anyone who has anything to do with books knows that zombies are a big deal right now, and there are a lot of theories as to why. Some point to the big print successes like Max Brooks’s World War Z and Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Others believe that movies like Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later ushered in the trend. More sociologically minded observers point to the economic and political climate with wry observations on escapism or (on the other hand) fiction that reflects the attitude of the times.
Whatever the reason, the audience is there, and lots of publishers and authors are piling on that knackers’ cart, grabbing for their fistful of flesh. Not all succeed. There are three basic tropes in writing about the living dead: creeping horror, bloody mayhem, and slapstick. This selection of morsels includes attempts at all three, each with a Bonus Zombie Gobbet (BZG) for undead aficionados.
Anderson, Kevin David & Sam Stall. Night of the Living Trekkies. Quirk. 2010. c.256p. ISBN 9781594744631. pap. $14.95. HORROR
Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead looks at Hamlet from the viewpoint of two minor characters on the sidelines. This book has the same kind of feel, as if a big-budget zombie blockbuster is being played out in Houston and we’re watching the effects on a small group, filmed with shaky hand-cams and cell phones. Setting a zombie novel at a Star Trek convention could have been dreadful, but it really works, with multifaceted characters and a plot that’s funny but not ridiculous. Geeky in-jokes abound, including chapter titles taken from the names of Star Trek episodes. BZG Trekkie zombies are alien invaders in the form of an infectious agent.
Bell, Alden. The Reapers Are the Angels. Holt. 2010. c.240p. ISBN 9780805092431. pap. $15. HORROR
This may be the most beautiful book about zombies this reviewer has ever read. Fifteen-year-old Temple travels alone through a dead world. Born after the apocalypse, this is the only realm she’s ever known, and she is perfectly suited to it, dispatching “meatskins” as a matter of course. After she accidentally kills a man who attempted to rape her, his brother vows revenge. Zombies and even her pursuer are a backdrop to a story about Temple’s real enemy, the monster she fears herself to be. Bell is a pseudonym for Joshua Gaylord (Hummingbirds). BZG Temple encounters a bulked-up, inbred clan of half-humans who have been injecting a steroidlike fluid derived from zombie brains.
The Book of the Living Dead. Berkley: Penguin Group (USA). Oct. 2010. c.416p. ed. by John Richard Stephens. ISBN 9780425237069. pap. $15. HORROR
Stephens, an editor whose credentials mostly include thematic collections of previously published material for Barnes & Noble (e.g., Mysterious Cat Stories), does the same here. All of the contents are from the past, between 1818 and 1940, with a concentration on the Romantics and the pulps. Poe, Twain, and Goethe rub shoulders with unknowns, hacks, and one newspaper story from 1888. There are some gems, especially Poe’s “The Facts of M. Valdemar’s Case,” H.P. Lovecraft’s “Herbert West: Reanimator,” and W.W. Jacobs’s “The Monkey’s Paw,” but all of these are available elsewhere, and in much better company. BZG Who knew Jack London wrote a zombie story?
Fingerman, Bob. Pariah. Tor. 2010. c.368p. ISBN 9780765326270. pap. $14.99. HORROR
Survivors trapped in a New York apartment building by zombie hordes are slowly starving to death when Mona appears, walking down the avenue, a ten-foot circle of empty space between herself and the undead. Her addition to the community turns privation into excess, since she can travel unmolested to get whatever the tenants want. Unfortunately, how the characters change, while interesting, is not enough to sustain the whole book. One character’s armored trek to rescue Mona provides the only frightening moment, and that doesn’t come until near the end. Fingerman is a noted author of graphic novels (From the Ashes) and prose fiction (Bottomfeeder). BZG The concept of someone immune to zombie attack is distinctive in the genre.
Geillor, Harrison. The Zombies of Lake Woebegotten. Night Shade. 2010. c.304p. ISBN 9781597801966. pap. $14.99. HORROR
At first, this seems like nothing more than a well-done pastiche of Garrison Keillor’s folksy writing style, including obvious parallels to his recurring characters and settings. However, when we learn that former school superintendent Martin Levitt is a serial killer, the story develops its own momentum. The middle 100 pages are made up of a series of vignettes, not in chronological order, that take place during the winter; an intriguing stylistic choice. The final chapters return to the standard time line, and there’s a satisfactory denouement and ending. BZG The resident zombie expert isn’t a scientist or folklorist, but a college kid who took a class on “The Zombie as Metaphor.”
Goldsher, Alan. Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion. Gallery: S. & S. 2010. c. 320p. ISBN 9781439177921. pap. $15. HORROR
Paul is undead. So is John, who made him that way, and George is, too. Ringo and Yoko are ninjas, and Mick Jagger is a famous zombie hunter. This is an oral history of the Beatles, written as if zombies and other supernatural creatures were commonplace. A reader who doesn’t need Wikipedia to tell him who “Magic Alex” Mardas was might enjoy the parallels with the true Beatles story, but otherwise the jokes get old fast. Goldsher is a music journalist. BZG The zombie infection process (described repeatedly, and with gusto) involves something like a vampire’s kiss, but with the exchange of cerebrospinal fluid rather than blood. [Film rights sold to Double Feature Films, producer of Pulp Fiction and Erin Brockovich.—Ed.]
Lamberson, Gregory. The Jake Helman Files: Desperate Souls. Medallion. Oct. 2010. c.270p. ISBN 9781605421704. pap. $14.95. HORROR
This is the second in what is likely to be a long-running series of supernatural private eye novels starring ex-cop and recovering cocaine addict Jake Helman. The first, Personal Demons, featured a soul-stealing demon as the Big Bad. Here, a new street drug called Black Magic is turning addicts into zombies. Lamberson (The Frenzy Way) is a writer/director of low-budget horror films, and this has the same schlocky feel. Details and continuity are sacrificed in favor of action, sex, and gore. Enjoyable but not terrific. BZG Jake kills one assailant by bashing its head in with a replica of the Maltese Falcon.
The Living Dead 2. Night Shade. 2010. c.500p. ed. by John Joseph Adams. ISBN 9781597801904. pap. $15.99. HORROR
The acclaimed first volume of The Living Dead was nearly all reprint stories. This new collection is mostly original, with some stories commissioned specifically for it. Contributors include Bob Fingerman (see above); David Moody (see below); new masters like Max Brooks, Jonathan Maberry, David Wellington, and Robert Kirkman; and old-school splatterpunks David Schow and John Skipp. BZG It’s like a wonderful, rotting smorgasbord. Dig in!
McFerrin, Linda Watanabe. Dead Love. Stone Bridge, dist. by Consortium. 2010. c.276p. ISBN 9781933330907. pap. $14.95. HORROR
A confusing muddle with a half-turned zombie as heroine and a corpse-possessing ghoul as villain, this novel by an acclaimed writer (Namako: Sea Cucumber; The Hand of Buddha) tries for a romantic air of dissolute decadence but ends up aimless and scattered. It’s hard to know whether the reader is supposed to admire or pity Erin, a vain dancer/model whose criminal father lures her to Japan in an effort to steal her mother’s fortune There are asides about the history of zombies and ghouls that take pages to finish and read like high school research papers, complete with footnotes. BZG Erin is a true Haitian zombie, alive but enslaved to her master by a cocktail of drugs.
Moody, David. Autumn. Griffin: St. Martin’s. Nov. 2010. c.320p. ISBN 9780312569983. pap. $13.99. HORROR
In under 24 hours, a contagion kills 99 percent of the human race. The immune few survivors only have a few days to pull together before the dead begin to rise again, at first just wandering catatonically, then gradually developing volition, but never aggression. The corpses present a danger because of their sheer numbers, and they are attracted to the slightest noise. This marks the first print publication of the novel; it’s been available free online since 2001 and has a cult following. BZG The word zombie never appears in the story. [Library marketing; this is the first of a five-book series that will be republished by Thomas Dunne Books.—Ed.]
Tripp, Ben. Rise Again: A Zombie Thriller. Gallery: S. & S. Oct. 2010. c384p. ISBN 9781439165164. pap. $15. HORROR
When the novel opens, a small-town teen named Kelley has run away from home, leaving her older sister alone the day before the zombies appear. The sister, Danny, is the town sheriff and an Iraq war vet with post-traumatic stress syndrome. Danny’s journey through a land of death to find Kelley makes for a remarkable character-driven story, and the final sentence takes it to another level. Unquestionably, it packs the best ending in this batch of books. BZG By the end, Danny is leading a Road Warrior–style convoy, roaming the West in search of peace.
Turner, Joan Frances. Dust. Ace: Berkley. 2010. c.384p. ISBN 9780441019281. $24.95. HORROR
What if zombies aren’t mindless eating machines? What if they think, feel, and communicate with one another but just can’t make themselves understood to ordinary humans? That’s the premise of this debut novel, which is told from the point of view of Jessie, who’s been dead for nine years. She runs with a gang and doesn’t have it too bad, until a new disease begins to infect both the living and the undead, changing each in different ways. BZG Jessie’s disdain for her living self’s vegetarianism and animal-rights activism: “There’s nothing in this world...as honest or as beautiful as meat and blood.”
Karl G. Siewert, Hardesty Regional Lib., Tulsa, is a fiction reviewer for LJ and wrote last winter's zombie fiction roundup (LJ 1/10)
