**A HUGE thank you to Bookish First for my ARC of The Living Dead!
Okay, small background on myself - Zombies TERRIFY me. For some reason they've always been the one horror trope that I can't cope with. For those that don't know me personally, I LOVE Horror and usually don't flinch when it comes to these kinds of things! Because I tend to find Zombies so terrifying, they are also my FAVORITE horror movie trope!
What's most terrifying about zombies? The weird aspect of humanity surrounding them! The fact that they're human but lack the aspect of basic human decency and the good vs. evil concept. If you've seen any zombie movies you know the basic theme is that a plague or disease turns humanity into monsters - something various storytellers have taken on through various media platforms.
Among all these iterations of zombies we have - nobody has done better than the King of Zombies himself George A. Romero. Perhaps the man I owe my love of horror to (seriously y'all my Dad had me watching Night of the Living Dead at age 2!) Romero pioneered the zombie genre that we have today. What did Romero do differently? He found and portrayed the humanity in the stories. Romero showed us instead how humans reacted to Zombies instead of just how they came to be, or what caused them.
All of that brings us here, to The Living Dead. After making some amazing zombie films Romero decided to embark on a zombie novel; however, he died before the novel was completed. Queue best selling author and Romero fan Daniel Kraus and you get this amazing novel!
Now, this book is LONG totaling over 600 pages, bringing us a 15 year story of a zombie apocalypse. On October 23 sometime in the early 21st century, humans that have recently passed stop staying dead. Instead, they rise up and become cannibalistic creatures - which are frequently referred to as ghouls, biters, white eyes, things, and demons, among other things. Eventually, the term zombies is settled on as the preferred term.
Through the narrative the novel has five main characters:
Etta Hoffman: A Washington DC statistician who works for a division of the census bureau called the 'American Model of Lineage and Dimensions' -- basically a unit that tracks US birth and death rates.
Charlene (Charlie) Rutkowski: A physician apprentice to San Diego's assistant medical examiner.
Greer Morgan: An African-American high school student living in a run down trailer park in Bulk, Missouri.
Karl Nishimura - A gay, married, Japanese-American master helmsman aboard the aircraft carrier USS Olympia.
Chuck Corso - A barely capable yet handsome news anchor - known as "the face" on Atlanta's WWN all news network.
Within the first section of the book you follow these five characters and see a glimpse into their lives as you meet their co-workers, family, friends and neighbors, with a twist -- this is all happening as the zombie apocalypse begins! Just like everyone else in the world our five characters are perplexed with the changes happening -- it takes a bit, but eventually our protagonists catch on to what is happening and unfolding around them. Once they do, they bring their unique skill sets to the table to help assist with the developing catastrophe.
As with any disastrous moment in history some self-serving (and maybe psychotic) humans join the zombies in creating chaos. Think the purge, full with bloody fights, swinging axes, racing bullets, flying arrows, sexual assault, and full on murder and mayhem. Surprisingly, Romero and Kraus managed to work romance into the novel to a point where it doesn't feel out of place!
Flash forward to 15 years later and you find a small colony of humnas have asstempled in Toronto, Canada. All the story lines converge, and you get to learn of the events that transpired from the very start of the zombie outbreak to this point in time fifteen years later. As others have mentioned, thankfully this is presented in abbreviated form because I cannot imagine how long this book would be if not for that.
Between the zombies, the self-serving humans, and our main protagonists what we are presented is a cautionary tale on human behavior, arguably the real horror here. An interesting aspect of this story is that we get passages from the zombie point of view something you don't really see in other zombie iterations. We are given insight into the thoughts of several of the zombies, allowing you to discover some interesting information about the zombies, especially when seeing things from the point of view of extremely decomposed zombie, "chief".
The Living dead is a horrifying tale that will make your skin crawl. The story keeps you engaged, even at the novels long length.
I highly recommend this for any zombie and horror fans out there.
Will the zombies take over the earth? Does humanity survive? Do our protagonists live? To find out how it all ends and what happens, pick up this amazing, epic, zombie horror novel!
Okay, small background on myself - Zombies TERRIFY me. For some reason they've always been the one horror trope that I can't cope with. For those that don't know me personally, I LOVE Horror and usually don't flinch when it comes to these kinds of things! Because I tend to find Zombies so terrifying, they are also my FAVORITE horror movie trope!
What's most terrifying about zombies? The weird aspect of humanity surrounding them! The fact that they're human but lack the aspect of basic human decency and the good vs. evil concept. If you've seen any zombie movies you know the basic theme is that a plague or disease turns humanity into monsters - something various storytellers have taken on through various media platforms.
Among all these iterations of zombies we have - nobody has done better than the King of Zombies himself George A. Romero. Perhaps the man I owe my love of horror to (seriously y'all my Dad had me watching Night of the Living Dead at age 2!) Romero pioneered the zombie genre that we have today. What did Romero do differently? He found and portrayed the humanity in the stories. Romero showed us instead how humans reacted to Zombies instead of just how they came to be, or what caused them.
All of that brings us here, to The Living Dead. After making some amazing zombie films Romero decided to embark on a zombie novel; however, he died before the novel was completed. Queue best selling author and Romero fan Daniel Kraus and you get this amazing novel!
Now, this book is LONG totaling over 600 pages, bringing us a 15 year story of a zombie apocalypse. On October 23 sometime in the early 21st century, humans that have recently passed stop staying dead. Instead, they rise up and become cannibalistic creatures - which are frequently referred to as ghouls, biters, white eyes, things, and demons, among other things. Eventually, the term zombies is settled on as the preferred term.
Through the narrative the novel has five main characters:
Etta Hoffman: A Washington DC statistician who works for a division of the census bureau called the 'American Model of Lineage and Dimensions' -- basically a unit that tracks US birth and death rates.
Charlene (Charlie) Rutkowski: A physician apprentice to San Diego's assistant medical examiner.
Greer Morgan: An African-American high school student living in a run down trailer park in Bulk, Missouri.
Karl Nishimura - A gay, married, Japanese-American master helmsman aboard the aircraft carrier USS Olympia.
Chuck Corso - A barely capable yet handsome news anchor - known as "the face" on Atlanta's WWN all news network.
Within the first section of the book you follow these five characters and see a glimpse into their lives as you meet their co-workers, family, friends and neighbors, with a twist -- this is all happening as the zombie apocalypse begins! Just like everyone else in the world our five characters are perplexed with the changes happening -- it takes a bit, but eventually our protagonists catch on to what is happening and unfolding around them. Once they do, they bring their unique skill sets to the table to help assist with the developing catastrophe.
As with any disastrous moment in history some self-serving (and maybe psychotic) humans join the zombies in creating chaos. Think the purge, full with bloody fights, swinging axes, racing bullets, flying arrows, sexual assault, and full on murder and mayhem. Surprisingly, Romero and Kraus managed to work romance into the novel to a point where it doesn't feel out of place!
Flash forward to 15 years later and you find a small colony of humnas have asstempled in Toronto, Canada. All the story lines converge, and you get to learn of the events that transpired from the very start of the zombie outbreak to this point in time fifteen years later. As others have mentioned, thankfully this is presented in abbreviated form because I cannot imagine how long this book would be if not for that.
Between the zombies, the self-serving humans, and our main protagonists what we are presented is a cautionary tale on human behavior, arguably the real horror here. An interesting aspect of this story is that we get passages from the zombie point of view something you don't really see in other zombie iterations. We are given insight into the thoughts of several of the zombies, allowing you to discover some interesting information about the zombies, especially when seeing things from the point of view of extremely decomposed zombie, "chief".
The Living dead is a horrifying tale that will make your skin crawl. The story keeps you engaged, even at the novels long length.
I highly recommend this for any zombie and horror fans out there.
Will the zombies take over the earth? Does humanity survive? Do our protagonists live? To find out how it all ends and what happens, pick up this amazing, epic, zombie horror novel!