Member Reviews

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

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Romero is much missed, and this book is fantastic. What talent we have lost in the form of the master.

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What happens when the dead refuse to stay dead? Can humanity survive the Zombie Apocalypse?

The Living Dead is written by George Romero, director and writer of iconic films such as The Night of the Living Dead and Daniel Kraus who has co-authored books with Guillermo del Toro including The Shape of Water. The result is a book that feels very cinematic, there’s some chilling build-ups, gory imagery and well-constructed cliff hangers that make you feel very immersed in this 700-page epic novel.

The book really reminded me of one my favourite novels – The Stand by Stephen King and not just in overall length. The Living Dead uses similar narrative techniques, one in particular being that we learn a lot about each character that we meet. Every character we are introduced to has a history, backstory, dreams and motivations that are spelt out for us on the page, regardless as to whether they die after 5 minutes or live until the end of the book. It keeps the reader on edge as you can’t be assured that someone will not die just because the author invested so much time in introducing them to you. It also means that for the characters that do make it further down the line, as a reader you feel a lot more invested in their survival and some late-book deaths really hit you hard for this reason. The range of characters we meet from the anti-social government employee and the pretty morgue assistant to the self-obsessed TV Anchor and the teenage girl are all well rounded, interesting and varied.

The book doesn’t hold back from showing us that the real villains of an apocalyptic-like scenario is likely to be other humans and there’s a real ‘we were the real monsters all along’ vibe. There’s a cult-like following that forms on a navy ship which reminded me of The Stand’s Dark Man, a political struggle between good and evil in a survival camp and vicious mob mentalities that have sprung up everywhere which really show that you can’t be too confident in who you route for.

My only real criticism of this book is that the origin of the zombie outbreak seems very unclear. They can obviously spread the disease by biting other humans, however how this happened to ‘patient zero’ is glossed over. We meet actually America’s first zombie when he rises from the dead in an autopsy room, however he has no bite marks on him and shortly after his resurrection the dead patients in the morgue freezer also wake with no interaction to the outside world. I would have liked a little more explanation as to how this had happened (or perhaps if nothing concrete, a little more speculation from the characters in the outset of the outbreak would have helped).

Overall, The Living Dead is a sprawling epic zombie story with a brutal message about what it means to be human. Thank you to NetGalley, Random House UK & Transworld Publishers – Bantam Press for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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The Living Dead, by George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus, is a zombie horror novel set in present-day USA. The story is told from multiple viewpoints, but we begin with two medical examiners who make the discovery of a body that seemingly returns to life. This is the beginning of a mass zombie apocalypse which is set to spread across America and bring together the lives of people who may have otherwise never been destined to meet.

As the outbreak spreads, more and more people are affected by it, but we begin with the characters having little to no way of identifying the beings which are appearing to return to life. They turn to the internet, radio stations and the television to try and warn the public of what is coming, with varying degrees of success. This highlights the use of media and the contrast between those who put it to use and those who rely on it as a platform for their own vanity.

The story progresses, with the now-identified zombies appearing to take over the Earth. The characters end up crossing paths in unexpected ways which later leads to them forming groups in order to survive. The groups culminate in a hierarchy being established, from which members enter and leave of their own accord. Some do so voluntarily, but others are forced out because of the influence they attempt to hold over the group which puts their lives at risk at certain points in the book.

However, as the story continues, an interesting theme begins to emerge. Rather than the zombies being portrayed as monsters, they are viewed in a new light by some of the group members/main characters. Instead of killing them, they try to respect them and discover that the zombies are merely animals who are functioning on instinct. They have no desire to kill, only to feed and remember the lives they have left behind. Instead, the characters are portrayed as the true monsters, turning against each other on a whim and seeking power and adoration for its own sake. All the zombies have done is highlight the things that should really matter.

When I first saw this book, I immediately wanted to read it. I love George Romero’s work and Day of the Dead is one of my favourite zombie films. This did not disappoint and despite the book’s length, both Romero and Kraus have an ability to keep the reader invested in the characters from start to finish.

The length is both a positive and negative, depending on how invested the reader becomes in the story. Some may find it off-putting and wish for a similar, more condensed version. Others will love it and not want it to end. For me, I think a balance could be achieved by having less background information and more action, but it would be difficult to figure out where. The book is so multi-layered and carried me along at a steady pace.

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I love zombie books and I love Romero's zombie films. I was so excited when I was approved for an arc of The Living Dead and desperately wanted to love it so it truly pains me to write this review. This book managed to make a zombie apocalypse incredibly boring. And loooong! It dragged on forever. At nearly 700 pages this was a chunker of a book and boy did I feel each and every single page. There was just way to much information and the book could easily have lost 300 pages without the plot being affected in the slightest. In the middle of a zombie apocalypse I don't believe that characters would suddenly stop to ponder their entire life to that point, how they got there, and what the meaning of life is. Nor do we as readers need to know any of that stuff. What little action there was in the book was constantly interrupted by long chunks of pages of characters' back story, thoughts, hopes for the future etc. This seriously interrupted the flow of the action and instead of having tension and fear built up, readers are just bored into oblivion.
The book didn't get any better as it went on. Sometimes a book can start out on dodgy grounds but then I can get invested in the characters and end up enjoying it. But bizarrely the second and third parts of the book were disjointed and instead of following the characters through the apocalypse and on in to building some type of new society we just jumped ahead 15 years and had all the info about the in between time just dumped on us in a series of tedious and uninteresting interviews.
The best part of this book was when I had finally finished it!

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I am a horror fan, but I wouldn’t say I was a big #Zombie fan - my knowledge is pretty restricted to #WorldWarZ and #TheWalkingDead. However this book captured my attention due to the legacy of George Romero, the grand master of zombie movies. The book was incomplete at the time of his death and was finished by Daniel Krause - although you wouldn’t know this.

The book is big. Make no mistake. It is also poignant in a year of COVID 19 - who could have predicted what has befallen us this year. We have seen the best and the worst of people. The book addresses similar themes albeit in a much more extreme way - what people, what humanity will do to survive in a world that is falling apart.

As you would expect from a Zombie book it is gory, it is visceral, it is bloody but it is so much more than this. It’s a bloody good read ( no pun intended) and It is also a brilliant character study of a group of people, all very different throughout the pandemic and then their journey 15 years into the future. This #Halloween if you are looking for a scarefest with some real depth then The Living Dead will scratch the itch.

Zombie action at it finest. Scary and relentless ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Out of five

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Series of snapshots from different characters taking the reader from trailer parks, a live newsroom and a Naval aircraft carrier. Quickly establishes the characters and showing how the zombie infection starts, spreads and changes. We even get a chapter written from the viewpoint of a recently created zombie!! The Social commentary of the films is evident in the novel.
Keeps faithfully to the economic and racial themes established in Romero’s cinema while also bringing many new developments to the zombie genre that I didn’t anticipate and don’t want to mention specifically as they are quite late spoilers to the plot.
Overall I enjoyed this novel much more than I expected to. It’s easy to view this as a cash in on Romero’s legacy but it’s so much more than that. Highly recommended.

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George Romero’s zombie film series set a benchmark with film history in which has made him the king of the zombie. Daniel Kraus wrote the screenplay for The Weight of Water, which is a sublime film from del Toro. Romero wrote his first novel, died and Kraus has come in to finish it off and what we have is one densely written novel that comes in at a very hefty paged story.

The plot is interesting and very fragmented with sure brilliance and some mundane thrown in. The beginning is full of long narratives that deal with individual stories and reads like short stories of the outbreak. Some of these chapters are very interesting and crack on at a good pace though there are some long winded chapters that lost my interest. The newsroom chapter, excellent, the warship in the ocean, not so much. The second part starts to bring the characters together and then the third we get a Romero ending.

The writing tends to be slightly overwritten and could do with a sharper editing. It is well written but some of the action sequences tend to get bogged down with long sentence structures which maybe a bit more staccato to keep it fast and loose. It does come more to life and has more connection in the last third part where we get characters grouped together so there is a pay off for people who stick with the book.

The characters are all brilliantly drawn and well established. As each introduction for each character is around 25 to 30 pages to get involved with. There is good reasoning to be very familiar with them but do to the long prologue or first half of the book, some of the characters do fade a bit by the time they are re-introduced. As with most zombie lore, you have the characters you love, the characters that are simply fodder and the horrible human archtype that appear in most apocalypse novels as well. They are better written than in most zombie novels but for me, after having something so sprawled out, there was some I had a lot of difficulty feeling any association with or cared about.

Overall, Romero and Kraus have given us some of great screenplays but this is book is a bit over stretched with some great ideas with most paying off. Reading like a collection of short stories in the first half, some coming together chapters in a slim second half and a fast apocalyptic finale which is over incredibly quick, we are left with a curiosity piece. There are some great zombie novels out there especially from Z A Recht, Kim Paffenroth, amongst others who tend to work well in the written structure. The Living Dead is well written but lacks heart and soul to make it a winner.

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Unfortunately this one was a DNF for me, as, although it was well written, and there was a lot of detail, it was a bit overwhelming for me. This is due to the fact that I am not always the biggest zombie fan and I couldn't quite connect to the story, though I very much appreciate having been given the chance to read this book.
There were a lot of characters, and a lot going on, which was interesting, and it started out well, but I wasn't invested in the characters enough to continue reading about a zombie apocalypse.
However, if you like zombies, gore, action and great writing, this one is definitely for you! This is definitely a great book is zombie horror is your thing, and I recommend it to horror fans!

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‘The Living Dead’ is a zombie novel started by the filmmaker George Romero, responsible for some of the most well-known zombie films including ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and ‘Day of the Dead’. After his death, it was given to the novelist Daniel Kraus – a lifelong Romero fan – to finish. Having never seen a single Romero film I can’t say how accurate the novel is to Romero’s vision, but I can say that it’s an epic, sprawling homage to the zombie genre, filled with musings on humanity and what it means to live and die.

The book is split into three parts – one right at the start of the zombie epidemic, one very short section as it develops, and one fifteen years later as humanity regroups. The first section takes up more than half the book. It jumps between a variety of characters in different situations – the pathologists who found the very first zombie, the teenager skiving school in her trailer park only to be surrounded by the undead, a news crew trapped in their studio, several members of the US navy on a boat off the coast of Mexico. Each adds a unique element, providing a fresh voice and perspective and showing the breadth of responses to the crisis. As time goes on, their stories start to intersect, unlikely people coming together in a way only a crisis can precipitate. The final section groups all the survivors in the same place – but Romero never believed in books having happy endings, and the ending is more a comma than a full stop.

While the novel is US-centric, rarely touching on anything happening outside, the characters are designed to show the breadth of humanity. Some are likeable, some tolerable, and some downright horrible to be in the headspace of. Highlights include Karl Nishimura, the US naval officer unexpectedly having to command a crisis when all he wants is to go home to his husband and children; Etta Hoffmann, the statistician determined to record everything for the history books; Charlene Rutkowski, the pathology assistant who finds herself hiding out with the married boss she’s been in love with for years; Chuck Curoso, the Face of WNN news network tasked with being the last news reporter on air. There are even rare glimpses inside the heads of the zombies – these are fascinating, with zombies seeing themselves as many bodies of a single consciousness rather than the individuality of human beings.

The main problem with this book is its scope. While it all comes together eventually, the first half is spent getting to know a couple of characters only to suddenly jump to someone completely different. In a way, this is less one large novel than several shorter stories, all of which weave in and out of each other as characters cross paths. It’s hard to remain interested and invested when the perspective changes with no explanation. Once each character is established, the book starts to flow much faster, the story coming into its own – but its possible the beginning would have worked better with either fewer point-of-view characters or a different structure.

Overall, this is an excellent book. The plot is gripping, the writing brilliant, and the characters varied and fascinating. The ending is an uncomfortable read but appropriate to the tone of the book. There are flaws, and I question if it needed to be over six-hundred pages long, but it’s a book worth persevering with. Recommended to all fans of zombies, apocalypse novels, and those interested in the psychology of human nature.

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Ah – zombies. They just won’t lie down and die, will they?

Since the adaptation of The Walking Dead into a TV series (currently 10 seasons, with spinoffs, and counting) they seem to have been resurrected once more into the cultural spotlight.

The ideas of zombies have been around for hundreds of years, but I guess in modern culture the name that springs to mind first is George A Romero. Co-writer and director of Night of the Living Dead (1968) and a number of sequels, he was the inspiration for Walking Dead and hundreds of other books, films and television programmes. Whereas zombies up to this point mainly stayed motionless or at best shuffled about at a slow pace, Romero’s zombies could run – fast, with gruesome results. And this inspired what we see and read today.

When George died in 2017, he evidently left behind much unfinished material. This book was one of them. Scriptwriter Daniel Kraus, who also wrote the novelisation Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, was given the responsibility of finishing the project.

Written in relatively short chapters, it is gripping from the start. The book is in three parts (which suggests a film/screenwriter’s structure). The first part is how the events of the 23rd October – here after referred to as 10/23 – first happen and the two weeks immediately afterwards. There is no warning, nor any particular reason, but suddenly bodies start coming back to life. The style of this one is (I’m assuming deliberately) in blockbuster-type mode, in that the book begins with a large range of characters, who in typical film-like fashion begin as separate story lines but eventually entwine.

Etta Hoffman is an autistic medical computer programmer who notices an influx of medical records that show people dying more than once. Then we have Luis Acocella, an assistant medical examiner who with his diener assistant Charlene (Charlie) Rutkowski has a cadaver come back to life on a mortuary table. Greer Morgan is an African-American teenager living on a trailer park in Bulk, Missouri, who suddenly finds her friends and family turn into zombies once bitten. Chuck Corso, nicknamed “The Face”, is a news cable anchor on WNN who with his tough news director Nathan Baseman reports live as things happen and becomes a beacon of news when other networks disappear. Lastly, Karl Nishimura is an officer on the aircraft carrier USS Olympia which is heading back to San Diego when things change…

The results are gruesome and effective. For those who like their horror gory, there’s enough rending, gnashing, tearing and gobbling to keep you happy.

The second part moves us on fifteen years after the initial outbreak. Here things become more like Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, in that the zombies now outnumber the living. However there seems to have been adjustment to a new reality, on both sides. The zombies now seem to have mainly slowed down into a life of decay and immobility.

The humans have begun to establish enclaves such as “Fort York”, where there is some sort of strange co-existence between them and the zombies. Although there are groups of humans on patrol and scavenging resources from amongst the rubble of the cities, in the main peaceful coexistence seems to be the way forward. However, the arrival of Richard Lindof, a Trump-like character, appears trying to re-establish the old order and divisions occur.

Overall, The Living Dead is a remarkable distillation of the zombie genre which covers pretty much everything that a reader would want in a zombie novel. It is both chilling and effective. Can you tell who wrote what in this joint project? No, and that’s what impresses (although it seems clear in the Afterword that much of the graft was Daniel’s.) I’m fairly sure that the often lyrical nature of the prose is perhaps Kraus’s work. Generally, it works very well and there’s a level of detail that makes this feel like the authors know their stuff. For example:

“Anytime he opened the chest of a corpse, the vivid colors and textures beneath seemed excited to finally show off. The confetti of sinew sprayed by a bone saw; the blinding brightness of blood; the wet wink of the brain; the bloomed chrysanthemums of mammary glands; the balloon-animal arteries of the heart; the high-fashion leather satchel of the stomach; the golden surprise of the pancreas. His rational mind knew these were not celebrations. They were the first blushes of the mushrooming spoil to come.”

There’s also some nice Easter eggs related to George’s work throughout as well – I’ll not give an example, as it is more fun finding them yourself. Daniel does mention a few of them in his Afterword, also explaining how the book builds on not just the films but also George’s ideas. Rather than being just a gore-fest, this one touches on topics as wide-ranging as violence and race in society, capitalism, the relevance and importance of the media and even the purpose of existence.

On the negative side of things, you may struggle to suspend disbelief at how all these disparate characters cross paths, although this is something that often happens in such novels. Overall, the focus is on the USA/Canada, with few mentions of the world outside North America. This may be a good thing, however. Most annoying for me was the minor British stereotype character who has clearly been to the Dick van Dyke school of acting – “! believe you’ll be the blighter to do it, love, certain as green apples,” this character says at one point, clearly having been transplanted from the London Blitz to 21st century Nottinghamshire. Thankfully, such transgressions are few.

The ending may please some readers and infuriate others. There is a definite nod to Romero’s pessimism – the human race do themselves few favours here – although at the same time, there is simultaneously a glimpse of hope, a point I quite liked.

I’ve said before that Zombies are not my favourite horror creature. But, even allowing for this, The Living Dead seriously impresses, grabbing my attention straightaway and keeping my interest. There’s a weight and a depth to this that shows both respect for the material for Romero and for the genre. The authors know what readers want – and deliver. Pleasingly impressive.

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A pair of medical examiners find themselves battling a dead man who won’t stay dead.

It spreads quickly.

In a Midwestern trailer park, an African American teenage girl and a Muslim immigrant battle newly-risen friends and family. On a US aircraft carrier, living sailors hide from dead ones while a fanatic makes a new religion out of death. At a cable news station, a surviving anchor keeps broadcasting while his undead colleagues try to devour him. In DC, an autistic federal employee charts the outbreak, preserving data for a future that may never come.

Everywhere, people are targeted by both the living and the dead.

We think we know how this story ends.

We. Are. Wrong.

George Romero is the grand-daddy of them all when it comes to the zombie genre. His masterwork, Night of the Living Dead, is quite rightly considered a classic. You look at anything zombie-related that has come since, and you’ll see a referential nod or two in George’s direction. Over the last decade, zombies have entered the mainstream in a big way. Movies like Zombieland, The Girl With All The Gifts and Train to Busan have been hugely popular. The televisual juggernaut that is The Walking Dead continues to rumble on, expanding into its own shared universe. Back in the nineteen sixties, Romero used his zombies to dissect a turbulent time in American history, highlighting the racial prejudices that others were happy to ignore. Over fifty years later, and the undead are still very much part of our collective consciousness. There is still something about the threat of the dead rising from the grave that plugs directly into the 21st century subconscious. When I first heard that a novel based on Romero’s unfinished manuscript was being released, I was immediately intrigued. The Living Dead by Daniel Kraus is a modern take on the zombie mythos and deftly explores the world of the living versus the world of the dead.

Each thread of the narrative views the collapse of society from different viewpoints. The chapters detailing the spread of the undead on an aircraft carrier are particularly effective. Setting events in an enclosed space in the middle of the ocean adds an additional sense of claustrophobia to an already claustrophobic subject. Watching the rigid command structure of the vessel descend into chaos is riveting stuff.

Elsewhere, Greer Morgan and her escape from the trailer park of hell is another highlight.

I really enjoyed when the various character’s stories crossed-over with one another. The Living Dead has quite the ensemble cast. I was a fan of Charlie Rutkowski, the junior medical examiner, who is right at ground zero when the end of the world begins. The plot of the novel covers multiple time periods and the evolution of her character throughout was all kinds of awesome. There is another character called Etta whose view of the pandemic is more unique than most. She has autism spectrum disorder and much prefers her own company. The prospect of less people and less distractions means Etta is able to focus all her energy in continuing an important task that forms the backbone of the entire novel.

For the gore-hounds amongst you, rest assured, there is plenty of bloody ickyness to enjoy. This is a zombie novel after all. It wouldn’t be the same if people weren’t getting ripped apart and munched on would it?

My only minor gripe is the same one I often mention when it comes to apocalyptic fiction – almost all of the novel is set in North America. I’m slightly disappointed that we don’t learn more about the zombie outbreak elsewhere in the world, it is a ‘global’ pandemic after all. That said, my adoptive hometown of Nottingham, here in the sunny old United Kingdom, does get a mention which was nice.

As an added bonus, at the end of the novel there are some insightful author’s notes detailing Kraus’ role in picking up where Romero left off. It is clear that this project became a real labour of love for both the men involved. The passion for the subject matter is evident on every page.

You may have noticed we’re in the midst of a global pandemic. Ok, it might not be zombie related but there is no denying it is frightening. Some folks are going to disagree, but I think now is the ideal time to read zombie fiction. When I read apocalyptic novels there is that one thing I’m always on the lookout for, that glimmer of hope. The tiniest suggestion that things could get better is hugely reassuring. Surrounded by death and destruction on a scale we would find difficult to comprehend it is a single point of light in the dark. I find it oddly life affirming, perhaps I’m less of a pessimist than I thought after all. The characters in novels like The Living Dead refuse to give up, they will literally fight till their last breath. I’d like to think if I found myself in a similar situation, I’d be able to do the same.

I know that zombies are always going to be literary marmite for some but for those of you who love the undead* then The Living Dead is well worth checking out. This novel is a vast beast of a thing, according to Goodreads it clocks in at round six hundred and fifty-six pages. It has given the authors the opportunity to really go full blockbuster when it comes to the book’s scope. As a counterpoint to this there are also intimate, personal moments for each character. There is a perfect balance between the two.

The Living Dead is published by Bantam Press and is available from 6th August 2020.

My musical recommendation to accompany The Living Dead is the soundtrack to Dying Light: The Following by Pawel Blaszczak. The album is a mixture of orchestral and ambient electronic tracks with just a dash of John Carpenter’s signature repetitive beats for good measure. I’m sure you’ll not be surprised when I tell you the score to a zombie first person survival game is an ideal companion to a zombie novel. The music manages to hit all the right emotive notes. Sometimes eerie, often fast paced and chaotic. There are even moments that are delicate/fragile. Trust me, it works.

*no, not that way. Euuwwww

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So, one day in October dead people suddenly stop staying dead.  The first one we hear about is in a morgue in San Diego but it is by no means an isolated occurrence.  The dead come back to 'life' as we have come to expect from all zombie fiction, be it books, movies, TV shows.  But this book is more than any of that, and is by far the most engrossing, epic take on the genre that I have read for a very long time, perhaps ever.
It does perhaps run on a little bit at times, with lots and lots of, often gory, details, and there are tons of characters to get to know.  And you do really get to know them and you start to care about a lot of them and root for them. Being a zombie story there is obviously a lot of gore and violence but there are also warm and fuzzy moments that gave even this die-hard horror fanatic a lump in the throat (okay, and a few tears in the eyes if I'm being completely honest).
An epic story that is just as much about humankind as it is about zombies.  It is exhilarating and heartbreaking and the characters are amazing.  Just don't get too attached to any of them...

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This was an epic story covering the beginnings of a zombie outbreak, through the years, all the way to the end.

The beginning of the book covered the stories of the main characters and those around them. There are a lot of stories so it does seem as though you are just skipping from one story to the next but stick with it. You get so invested in these characters you literally will not be able to stop reading. From the first breakout of the zombies, to zombie animals, to the dangers of the surviving members of society, the characters are really put through the wringer.

To say I loved this book is putting it mildly, my only gripe is that I did not want it to end where it did, I wanted to know more. You have to read it!

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A book about zombies by the zombie king was never going to disappoint! Starting from Day 0 of the outbreak and going up to 15 years later, the story chronicles 5 major characters’ journeys - Greer, a teenager from a trailer park; Charlie, a coroners assistant; ‘The Face’, a TV news anchor; Etta; a civil servant; and Karl, a Naval Officer - as well as some side stories of people that influence them along the way.
Like a zombie onion, there are many layers to this story. Romero’s films were always a statement about humanity, and his book is no different. It touches on politics, religion, race, class, gender, and disability, as well as the current obsession with social media, technology, and being constantly picture perfect.
It was a hefty tome at over 600 pages but I felt like I could keep reading another 600. The only reason I took a star off was towards the very end it got a little too preachy and metaphorical, but it didn’t stop this being a great read.

I received a free ARC of this book from Netgalley in return for a fair review.

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The gist: If you like zombie films and zombie books and zombies in general then you’re almost morally obligated to give this book a go. IT’S A GEORGE A. ROMERO ZOMBIE BOOK FOR GOD’S SAKE. It would be wrong not to, right?

And we could get into the various insights and comparisons to the current states of coronavirus affairs, and how the whole zombie genre is in some ways a satirical reflection of so many facets or our modern world (let alone our modern world in the context of a global pandemic). Or we could get in to just what a damn fine ride this book is.

There is something classic that runs through the bones of this book – whether it’s because of Romero’s involvement, or because of the inclusion of the Hoffmann Archive of survivor interviews, or because it covers so many characters’ experiences of the zombie outbreak and what comes next. Maybe it’s even because of the insight at the end of the book into how the novel came to exist. This book in some ways feels like reading a history book, the history of zombies as seen from the future.

There’s a great range of characters, covering so many sides of society, so many angles on what was important to people in the old world and the new world. There’s fresh slants on the zombie outbreak—a particular scene in a school stands out and is just heart wrenching for reasons you probably won’t predict until you get there. There’s characters who change and grow and some of them die and some of them don’t and you’re never really going to know who’s safe until you hit the last page. And even then, can you really be sure? There’s zombie lore explored and there’s zombie questions raised. The book both complements the Living Dead films and also stands alone.

And you’ve got to tip your hat to Kraus who carefully and respectfully brought the book to life – and you’ve also got to think that it seems like he had a lotta fun doing it, which absolutely comes through in the telling.

Regardless of your taste in zombies, your preferences for zombie lore, this is the sort of book that needs adding to your zombie canon. I said canon, not cannon. What, you have a zombie cannon?

The Living Dead can’t help but be a classic of the genre—if you don’t read it for the fiction, read it for the lore.

Favourite line: Damn, she hated it when good, clean spite got fucked up with admiration.

Read if: You like zombies. It’s a no brainer. Pardon the pun.

Read with: The Living Dead films ready to watch back to back, on repeat, with a pen and paper for your notes.

I'll be posting this review at www.thedustlounge.com closer to the release date

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This is a book that almost needs no introduction. Everyone is familiar with the zombie apocalypse story now. The dead start attacking the living and everyone who is bitten becomes one of them. This book is an epic retelling of that familiar premise. It’s a sprawling 650 page opus which covers the start of the outbreak and journeys through the years that follow. There’s a multitude of characters who all converge in a terrifying climax. This is not a book for the faint at heart, the violence is gruesome and the characters are often not the heroes we’d look for. There’s a real human element to the stories. Every character is fully fleshed out (if you’ll pardon the expression) which makes it all the more harder when some of them meet their unpleasant end. There’s a lot for fans of zombie lore to enjoy and as it comes from the master himself, George Romero, it’s a must for any Dawn of the Dead fan. It’s a hefty tome but well worth putting in the effort for.

I received a ARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for a fair review.

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(Will post this review on my site closer to the release date. But here it is now.)

When I was ten or so, I was exposed to films that completely blew me away. Aliens, Predator, The Thing - I would go to school the next day and my friends and I would discuss who saw the gorier movie - was it Terminator, where he pulls out his damaged eye? Was it Blood Sport?

THE LIVING DEAD, begun by late legendary film-maker George A. Romero before his untimely death and completed by Daniel Kraus, a genius writer in his own way (we’ll get to why later), is the type of thrilling, gory as hell epic that I want to pass around to friends and fellow gorehounds, giddy as my old self, so we could marvel at its content.

A novel split into three distinctly different acts, it is a narrative that begins at the moment all hell breaks loose, using a cast of characters across several locations in America to show just how violently and gruesomely things are unfolding. From deep within the confined spaces of a morgue to a trailer park full of bickering personalities to a navy ship about to come home after its tour, it effectively shows how the outbreak unfolds and how these characters grapple with the mind-bending turn of events.

It’s something that we’re overly familiar with, the collapse of the world as we know it as the surge of ghouls come shambling along, but it doesn’t make these blood-splattered pages any less riveting, tense or effective - especially thanks to blistering fast pacing, punchy prose and delightfully descriptive gore.

As dizzying and delightful as the horror is, it comes underscored by sadness at George’s passing. If these pages are anything to go by, he was an imaginative and ferocious writer and I wished he had written more before he left this world.

However, with sadness comes a sense of joy. George’s ferocity in writing is continued, almost seamlessly, by Daniel Kraus, who has such a way with words that I couldn’t read this novel during any of the day’s meals! More than this, he honours what George was exploring with these films as much as he honours character or dialogue or the story in general.

I think fans of George will be utterly delighted to know that this story is very much George’s world, as lovingly and carefully engineered and expanded upon and complimented by Daniel’s fierce, wonderful writing. Like any of the DEAD films, there’s a meaty sociopolitical context we’re dealt with, from exploration of race to what feels like satire of the media to embracing religion in a new crazy world. It doesn’t feel heavy handed, it’s not something that’s flogging you to, ahem, death, but rather, I think it explores the festering evil lurking in the very people we live with or work with just enough to be memorable and effective.

The last act of the novel does feel a bit rushed though, I will say. Some things feel a bit sped up to get to some sort of climax and conclusion that, though ultimately engaging and effective, feels like it could’ve benefited from another 50 pages or so to develop more of the unfolding vision.

Ultimately I very much enjoyed my time with THE LIVING DEAD. It is a thrilling, ultra-gory epic, with its own biting social commentary and heart. It thrilled me to bits, it made me reflect and it entertained the horror fan in me to no end.

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The Living Dead

Ok, admission time, I’m drawn in quickly by anything zombie apocalypse related so this book had me interested from the beginning!

Now this is a long book so you have to be invested in it. I found once I dipped into it, I couldn’t put it down! There are gorey parts so be warned! The characters are developed beautifully and I felt a real affinity with them. I loved the style of this book and would definitely recommend it! 4.5 stars!

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On October 23rd, John Doe arrives at San Diego’s morgue dead. An autopsy is performed, but cause of death is ambiguous. Certainly not the gunshot wounds on his body. Yet, despite being declared dead, and with his heart in Charlie Rutkowski, the morgue’s diener, John Doe starts to move.
All around the world, the dead start to rise and fall on their still breathing fellow humans, fuelled by a primordial need to feed. Any who are bitten die but return to a sort of life, spreading the sickness further until humanity is divided into pockets, fighting for survival.
The Living Dead follows the stories of a handful of survivors; an 18-year-old girl, a morgue diener, a naval officer, a new presenter, and a data analyst, from day one, exploring the lengths humanity will go to in order to survive.
For anyone who regularly reads my reviews, I don’t need to confess that I love zombies. It isn’t the zombies themselves, it’s the survivors and the challenges they face. Sometimes, the survivors are more terrifying than the zombies. The Living Dead shows humanity at its best and its worst.
A few different points of view are used to tell this story, but it’s handled well. A couple of characters will be together in a moment, and we live that moment with both of them, the highs, the lows and the bits in the middle where survival is as good as it gets.
The central theme is around the almost tribal nature of humanity, banding together based on common traits. The Living Dead demonstrates there are no Them or They, there are just humans. Each of the characters reflects this theme, men and women who all face racism and prejudice every day because of the colour of their skin, gender or sexuality. The situation demonstrates that people have the same fears and concerns, and scope for compassion regardless of the surface, superficial differences such as skin tone. A very relevant message during these times.
In fact, the only male Caucasian of any real note is a Catholic chaplin on an aircraft carrier, and for me, he is the least rounded character. White men of religion going mad in times of crises and ruling plots of land like bloodthirsty dictators is not new and my only criticism of the entire book.
A little while ago I read a short story by Jonathon Maberry who wrote Dead of Night and Fall of Night. In George A. Romero ’s opinion, they were the official explanation as to how the dead came back to life and Maberry to write a short story to connect everything together. A Cold War Russian bioweapon is tested on a prison inmate, genetically engineered parasites that take over a person’s brain, cutting off the consciousness from the physical. A person would be aware of what they were doing, but unable to stop themselves.
This is an uncomfortable concept, and The Living Dead contains some scenes written from the zombies’s points of view. They are aware on a primitive level and have some limited memories. These scenes are fascinating, the hive mind of the zombies, what they remember and do not, and do as much to challenge the reader’s perception of zombies as the choice of characters.
Another interesting point about this book is the two authors, Daniel Kraus finishing what George A. Romero started. Even though there were two people involved in it, its impossible to tell who had a hand in what. It is seamless throughout making for an enjoyable, fast paced read. Recommended.

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