Great Zombie Book From Beginning to End!

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It starts with one dead body. John Doe. However, he doesn't stay dead. It's happening everywhere. The dead are coming back to life and attacking people. Those people die and come back to life. Some try to spread the information to others as quickly as they learn it but many do not realize what's happening until they see it themselves. Mistakes are made as people try to figure out how to act in these conditions. Some people rise to be leaders. Some try to help others. Some let their worst internal desires, ones that have been pushed down for so long, finally be released and acted upon.

I love books/movies/tv shows about zombies but I'm particularly fascinated with how PEOPLE behave in these apocalyptic conditions. This book delivers on both points. The Living Dead takes us from the very beginning of the zombie apocalypse to more than a decade afterward. It gives the reader enough zombie horror and gore for those who want that but it also explores human behavior and at what point in a societal breakdown people start letting their true selves come out.

This is the first time I have ever felt sympathy for zombies. I love how Romero and Kraus kept that little bit of humanity and memory in the zombies. As we got further and further along from the start of the outbreak, this book addresses some deeper issues such as humans' impact on the environment and other living creatures as well as our desire to hold power over others. There were some really deep messages about the way our society functions and there were parts of this book that had really inspiring messages. We also see the dark side of humans - the cruelty, the greed, the violence. To classify this as a "book about zombies" is really an injustice to this book as it is so much more. It is a long book at over 600 pages but I easily read through at least 100 pages at each sitting. This is a really intellectual take on the zombie topic and I enjoyed it from cover to cover.