Book Review: Flesh Eaters

Being a life-long fan of Horror novels, I look forward to reading each years winner of the Bram Stoker award for best Horror Novel.  The 2012 recipient, Flesh Eaters by Joe McKinney was actually the third novel in his Dead World series, so before I read the award winner I went back and read both Dead City and Apocalypse of the Dead.  As most horror novels are stand alone I haven’t had to do this level of back-story reading since 2004 when Peter Straub’s In the Night Room won, which required me to read four other novel (two of them award winners and all of them quite enjoyable)

Flesh Eaters works like an unending nightmare – it starts in Houston shortly after the events of one Hurricane and just before it is hit by two progressively worse ones.  As the city reels under the very real-life horrors brought on by such a disaster certain survivors begin to act strange, their eyes clouding over and then suddenly craving the flesh of others.

The novel is a prequel to the previous books, which both mention the devastation which took place in Houston , but give only secondhand accounts of it.  The main character is Police Sergeant Eleanor Norton, who, on top of her duties as a police officer during the storm, is also trying to save her own husband and daughter as well as other survivors she finds along the way.

Although I have to admit I was starting to feel pretty zombied-out by the time I got to this book (having received a zombie-themed calendar last year, I’ve actually read more than a dozen zombie-themed books in the last few months), I found the book worked well, introduced a lot of well developed characters into an increasingly horrible situation and will have me keeping an eye out for other books by the author (but I’ll be taking a break from his zombie titles for a while as I’m flexing my fantasy-genre muscles right now).

Genre Character of the Week: Ed Moore

Over the weekend I read the novel Apocalypse of the Dead by Joe McKinney, it is the second novel in his “Dead World” series, and other than a few mentions of the events and characters from the first novel, it is a stand-alone story.  Following a very large number of people through a zombie apocalypse, the stand outs for me were a young convict name Billy Stine, and this weeks genre character, Ed Moore.

Ed is a retired U.S. Marshall, who at the beginning of the story is living in a retirement community in Florida when a plague of zombies hit the shore, quickly changing the populace into even more zombies through bites and scratches (like the film …28 Days Later the zombies in McKinney’s world are actually humans suffering from a virus, rather than reanimated corpses)  Immediately taking charge of the small group of survivors

The first thing I like about Ed is the concept; usually in zombie stories the elderly are simply victims or would-be victims that our heroes need to save so the idea of a man in his seventies who can hold his own against zombies while still coming across as a real character had a great appeal to me.  The second thing I like about Ed was the fact that he’s an incredibly old school, cowboy type, tipping his hat to ladies when he says hello and rebuking Billy for his foul language around women and children.

As a novel I felt it was a little too busy, the number of significant characters was over a dozen and as we switched from storyline to storyline it often took me a little while to figure out exactly which character was being written about.  A big part of the appeal of Ed is that as a character he was so well written I never had this problem.

I’m currently reading McKinney ’s “Dead World” series as the third novel, The Flesh Eaters, won last years Bram Stoker award for best horror novel, and I wanted the context I would get by reading the entire series. The book was pretty good, unlike Dead City I don’t think I’ll purchase it as the number of characters was a little unwieldy for me, but overall it was a pretty sold zombie apocalypse novel.

Genre Character of the Week: R

Taking a short break from school-related texts, I spent the long weekend (Gee I love living in Alberta!) checking out the Young Adult (YA) novel Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion. Going into the book here is what I knew – it was supposed to be some sort of zombie love story, it is being turned into a film that will be released in 2013, and it is clearly being marketed as something of interest for fans of the Twilight books and film franchise. Now you know why I might not have been excited to check it out.

On the positive side, I’d already had a really great experience of Zombie-themed YA fiction in Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth series, so I knew the topic could be covered in an effective way for younger readers and as I spend each day looking at my zombie calendar whenever I want to remember the date, I’ve had zombies on my brain (pun intended). But after reading the book I’ve got to say it’s success comes down to its main character, and our genre character of the week, R.

Structured in a lot of ways like YA animal based fiction (think The Incredible Journey or Warhorse), the novel is narrated and told from the point of view of a zombie named R. Like all zombies he can no longer remember his name, but the initial has stuck, although he doesn’t speak, it is through his strangely eloquent prose that we see a zombie apocalypse from the other side.

R’s world is a grim one indeed, but he does have occasional flashes of memory, hints of what his life may have been before. One thing I loved about the book is that as we are seeing everything through his eyes, we don’t actually know how old he is, he could be anywhere from a teen through to a man in his fifties so the character is easy to empathize with from my 35-year-old point of view. In a way it’ll be a shame that his age and appearance will be locked down in the upcoming film to that of 22-year-old actor Nicholas Hoult (who I liked in X-Men First Class and loved in the BBC series Skins) as it may distance the emotional connection for older readers like me.

The strange thing about zombies has often been how much they look like us, and sometimes even act like us, when it is also clear that there really isn’t anyone home, just echoes of a previous existence. R made me think differently about that – and that’s about the best comment I can make about the character and the book.

Definitely worth checking out.

Movie Review: Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

As I've worked my way through horror films over the years, one of the more interesting areas I've come across are the Italian horror films (called Giallo (Italian for yellow) films.  My personal favourites of this sub-genre of film are Phenomena, Zombi 2, and Danger Diabolik.  Although only the first two were horror, the third is based off an Italian comic book, just like today's movie, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night.


The movie is a cross genre between the classic film noir detective story and a monster movie.  Dylan Dog (played by Brandon Routh) is a retired investigator who specialized in monster-based crimes (specifically vampires and werewolves).  The film uses a standard narration structure and takes place in New Orleans, Louisiana.


Like all noir detectives, Dylan has a past involving a beautiful girl who died on his watch, and some sins of his own.


For me, the best part of the film however as the comedy elements of Dylans friend Marcus (played by Being Human's Sam Huntington), who (mild spoiler) after being killed early in the film is returned as a zombie.  Unlike most zombies in film however, Marcus is still self-aware, and his denial/acceptance of his new un-dead situation made for many of the best parts of the movie.


Overall it was a lot of fun, a little silly, and did a good job of staying within the lines of horror and noir, and with the comedy elements my kid liked it, and the villain being played by Taye Diggs meant that my wife was also a fan.

Book Review: The Forest of Hands and Teeth

Last week I read something I had never expected to come across in Young Adult (YA) fiction - a really great zombie apocalypse novel. Although I'm sure there are many others out there, I have personally never come across a book aimed at teens that shows so effectively the relentless terror of a world overwhelmed by zombies and the people who have somehow managed to survive.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan is really, really good. If you've never read a zombie novel before I can't think of another that would be a better introduction to the sub-genre. The novel focuses on a young girl, Mary, who lives in a small forest village surrounded by walls that are in turn surrounded by the undead (BTW - I love the fact that my computer's dictionary still doesn't acknowledge the word undead as being legit; somehow the fact that it appears on my screen underlined in red makes me feel like my genre tastes are still edgy and not necessarily accepted as the norm).

Without going into a synopsis, I can only say that Mary comes across as a fully realized three-dimensional character; her wants and dreams are easy to relate to and her wish to see the ocean (something she has only ever head about, as a sort of legend), is heartbreaking in its innocents.

The book has a sequel and I will definitely be checking it out. This is one of those few books that I knew I would need to own within the first hundred pages. Seriously, it's that good.

Series Review: Dead Set

On Friday I watched the 2008 Zombie/Big Brother mini-series, Dead Set with my wife and our friend Ron. As Ron had seen both series 10 and 11 of BIg Brother UK, and I've seen a whole lot of zombie apocalypse films it seemed like a good idea.

The set up is pretty simple, during a fictional season of the british version of Big Brother (a reality show in which contestants are forced to live in a house without outside contact for a few months wherein every move they make can be viewed by the home audience) a zombie outbreak occurs and as the house is set up to keep the outside world away from the contestants, that is exactly what happens - they continue to live their reality-tv life completely unaware that the world beyond them has effectively ended.

The series played with the cultural fascination with these types of shows and did a very effective job of keeping true to both its reality TV and zombie roots (I'll have to take Ron's word for the Big Brother stuff, as I've never seen the series before). The show mostly focues on a production assistant (played by Jaime Winstone, pictured right) and her boyfriend (who was away from the house when the s#*t hit the fan, but does feature many of the contestants in strong supporting roles.

In the end the series was fun - I'm not sure if I'd purchase it (although right now I can't as it's not available in Region One format), and I would definitely warn people against the gore (it was significantly more than I was expecting on regular television.) For fans of Reality TV and Zombie flicks, however, it would definitely be right up your alley.