Double Dead by Chuck Wendig

Coburn’s been dead now for close to a century, but seeing as how he’s a vampire and all, it doesn’t much bother him. Or at least it didn’t, not until he awoke from a forced five year slumber to discover that most of human civilisation was now dead - but not dead like, oh no..

I wanted to read DD as soon as I got wind of the concept: a vampire in waking up during the zombie apocalypse and discovering that his food is now an endangered species. Coburn is the vampire in question, and it’s immediately clear that he’s not someone used to being denied.

DD opens with Coburn’s awakening, an unexpected trickle of blood reaching his withered, blood-starved body. It’s a peach of an opening chapter and does a fine job of hooking you and setting the tone for what’s to come.

It’s a fair assumption that most people will be familiar with the parameters of a post zompocalyptic world, particularly in the wake of The Walking Dead, and Wendig doesn’t waste any words setting up the basics, letting him get on with fleshing out Coburn. By turns violent, arrogant and sarcastic, Coburn is nonetheless a witty and likeable character, which is quite an accomplishment. Later on, when pieces of the story of his life before his enforced slumber start to emerge, it rounds off his character quite neatly.

It’s not an easy transition for Coburn, going from a supremely confident and borderline smug predator to having to shepherd his food to somewhere safe and secure, while being inexorably dragged into the messy personal histories and interactions of the living.. and the unpleasant realisation that in order to survive he’s going to have to think about more than his appetite. Particularly when the zombies who’ve mutated after coming into contact with his blood finally close in. It's handled very well, and while Coburn is changed by what's he's experiencing, it's a gradual and believably messy process in keeping with the rest of the story, rather than any kind of sudden, fairy godmother like epiphany.

Fast and bloody good fun, Double Dead delivers everything you’re expecting it to and then some. I finished it in a day, and enjoyed it thoroughly (particularly the cannibal barbecue- brilliant!). It’s a fresh perspective on a favourite theme with lashings of dark humour and a charismatic main character I’d really like to see more of.



You can visit Chuck's website here.

Viking Dead by Toby Venables

Northern Europe, 976 AD. Bjólf and the viking crew of the ship Hrafn flee up an unknown river after a bitter battle, only to find themselves in a bleak land of pestilence. The dead don’t lie down, but become draugr – the undead – returning to feed on the flesh of their kin. Terrible stories are told of a dark castle in a hidden fjord, and of black ships that come raiding with invincible draugr berserkers. And no sooner has Bjólf resolved to leave, than the black ships appear... Now stranded, his men cursed by the contagion of walking death, Bjólf has one choice: fight his way through a forest teeming with zombies, invade the castle and find the secret of the horrific condition – or submit to an eternity of shambling, soulless undeath!

Viking Dead opens with a young boy named Atli reluctantly making his way home, knowing that all he has to look forward to is a lecture and a beating from his abusive and small minded father. But then the mist rolls up the river, and through this veil emerges a dragon. And so we meet Bjolf and his crew as they prepare for what should be just another raid on a small village.

But the raid doesn't go to plan as they're ambushed by their bitter rival Grimmsson, and they're chased out into a storm wracked estuary, where they escape Grimmsson and find Atli stowed away. Fog follows the storm, and they gratefully head towards the first land sighted, however gloomy and unwelcoming its appearance. It’s here that they encounter the first of the walking dead that plague these lands, and they quickly flee the madness of that shore, but what lays before them is far darker and stranger than they could imagine.

The imagery in Viking Dead is strong, and builds a convincing and claustrophobic world around Bjolf and his men, who are likeable, normal guys (by Viking standards) who’re just out there trying to make a living. They aren’t out to be heroes, but as they begin to realise their predicament and are pushed to the brink by the horrors they are forced to confront, their uncertainty and fear turns to anger. Rather than find a way to escape the horror, they turn to confront it, to cut their way to the source of the taint. It’s a hard fight right to the end, a struggle that sees them coming up against several diehard zombie favourites as well as several new twists on these, including a truly diabolical use of zombie ants- a stroke of macabre genius I would love to see translated to the big screen one day.

Viking Dead was as much fun as I expected it to be. Come on, its Vikings and zombies! What makes it work once the initial novelty wears off is that their world has a very normal, Viking -era feel to it (no doubt a product of decent research) and a firmly grounded cast of characters which keeps it from straying into the realms of silliness. Bjolf is a great character, and the switches between his and Atli's perspectives work to create a nice picture of life as a warrior in his crew. The villain gets some attention too, though not as lavish, but it helps to provide some background.

The pace is good and while there's plenty of chaotic action, it's gritty and real rather than an over the top gore-fest. The ending might divide opinion, it worked for me.

Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry

Nearly fourteen years ago a freak virus swept across the world turning those infected from the living into the undead. Benny Imura has grown-up never knowing anything different; his last memories of his parents tainted by the image of them becoming zombies.

Now Benny is fifteen, and his brother Tom wants him to join the "family business" and train as a zombie killer. The last thing Benny wants is to work with Tom ­­- but at least the job should be an easy ride. Then the brothers head into the Rot and Ruin, an area full of wandering zombies, and Benny realises that being a bounty hunter isn't just about whacking zombies.

As he's confronted with the truths about the world around him, Benny finds his beliefs challenged and makes the most terrifying discovery of all, that sometimes the worst monsters you can imagine, are human…

“Benny Imura couldn’t hold a job, so he took to killing,” runs the first line of Rot and Ruin, and while it might look like a sentence, it’s actually a viciously barbed hook.

Set in the near future, R & R introduces us to Benny, who at 15 years old, only has fragmented memories of the apocalypse that consumed his parents world. Memories that include his older brother Tom abandoning their mother to the zombies, a betrayal he can’t move past and which is pulling them apart. To make it worse, everyone else respects and admires Tom, whose job as a zombie hunter doesn’t fit well with the truth that Benny knows. Or thinks he knows.

But the rules of their fortified town are clear: he’s fifteen now, so he must be apprenticed to a trade or see his rations and privileges cut. As his options dwindle it becomes clear that he will have to do the unthinkable and become his brother’s apprentice, and cross into the zombie-infested wilderness beyond the fences. It’s a journey that will rattle the foundations of everything he believes, and forces him to grow up fast- or die. The truth hidden amongst the Rot and Ruin is an unforgiving one, and if he survives it, his life will never be the same again.

I enjoyed R & R immensely. Benny is a lively character, and his evolution, both personally and in his relationships with his brother and friends, from the angry boy in the beginning to the person he is at the end feels genuine and unforced. While the setting for the story is a relatively familiar one, it feels fresh, with the zombies a omnipresent, lurking presence, as much a feature of the landscape as the shattered remnants of the fallen world that litter it.

Interested? You can read the first chapter here.

Rot and Ruin in the first in a new series by Jonathan Maberry and the second instalment, Dust and Decay, is out in September this year. It’s going in my diary!

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

'R' is a zombie. He has no name, no memories, and no pulse, but he has dreams. He is a little different from his fellow Dead.

Amongst the ruins of an abandoned city, R meets a girl. Her name is Julie and she is the opposite of everything he knows - warm and bright and very much alive, she is a blast of colour in a dreary grey landscape. For reasons he can’t understand, R chooses to save Julie instead of eating her, and a tense yet strangely tender relationship begins.

This has never happened before. It breaks the rules and defies logic, but R is no longer content with life in the grave. He wants to breathe again, he wants to live, and Julie wants to help him. But their grim, rotting world won't be changed without a fight...

I’d heard about Warm Bodies before Santa dropped it off at Christmas, and up to that point I’d not been able to convince myself to give a go- a zombie/human romance? Huh? No, thank you, that wasn’t quite my cup of tea. After the shameless abuse the monsters of old have received in recent years the last thing I wanted to do was suffer through the experience of my beloved zombies going shiny and emo.

Christmas passed, and I returned to work, and conscious that W.B remained untouched on the shelf I slipped it into my very macho man-bag as my commuting read.

‘R’, the main character, is a zombie. As part of a small herd/ pack, he hunts, kills without mercy and eats the living, delighting in the texture and the high that fresh brain tissue imparts. Isaac doesn’t shy away from this, which is really important- without this, the core of the story would lose its impact.

W.B is told in a first person perspective, so you get to know ‘R’ from the first page, and through his eyes and thoughts Isaac takes us into the midst of the herd and the weird, bittersweet semblance of social order that some remnant of their minds cling to. But R is the star of the show, and a random encounter with a stray group of living survivors sets in a motion a series of events that spark a strange and long forgotten feeling inside him. Is something happening to him, or is it simply mental indigestion from the brain he’s just eaten- the brain of a boy who once loved the girl he just died defending? R doesn’t know, but it stirs him from the lethargy of his undead existence and, fired by curiosity, he takes the traumatized Julie to his ‘nest’ amidst the horde, hiding her from the hungry dead around them like a dog with a bone.

The story unfolds as R struggles to come to terms with feelings he no longer remembers and cannot express. Tormented by the memories of the boy he ate, a ghostly presence seeking its own redemption, R’s journey is a gradual one. It’s handled with a deft touch that makes it seem believable and leaves you rooting for them as the ripples of what he and Julie are experiencing spread, setting up a confrontation with something dark and terrible.

Warm Bodies was as fun to read as it was engaging. A very pleasant surprise overall, and I finished it in three sittings, which is always a good sign!

The Reapers Are The Angels by Alden Bell

God is a slick god. Temple knows. She knows because of all the crackerjack miracles still to be seen on this ruined globe...

Older than her years and completely alone, Temple is just trying to live one day at a time in a post-apocalyptic world, where the undead roam endlessly, and the remnant of mankind who have survived, at times, seem to retain little humanity themselves.

This is the world she was born into. Temple has known nothing else. Her journey takes her to far-flung places, to people struggling to maintain some semblance of civilization – and to those who have created a new world order for themselves.

When she comes across the helpless Maury, she attempts to set one thing right, if she can just get him back to his family in Texas then maybe it will bring redemption for some of the terrible things she's done in her past. Because Temple has had to fight to survive, has done things that she's not proud of and, along the road, she’s made enemies.

Now one vengeful man is determined that, in a world gone mad, killing her is the one thing that makes sense…

Reapers hit the shelves in September last year, and it’s a veritable crime that it took so long to work its way into my hands.

Set amidst the detritus and crumbling remains of post zombie apocalypse America, Reapers follows the story of a teenage girl named Temple as she meanders across the empty landscape, its dangers both hidden and overt. Temple’s a loner and a survivor though, born into a merciless, dystopian world and hardened by the necessities of survival when the rules of civilization are passing from history into myth.

An encounter with a community of survivors changes the course of her life though when she reacts to a personal attack with the same vicious aplomb that had let her survive this long. She breaks away, and soon thereafter finds herself taking reluctant charge of Maury, a slow but gentle man.

But she knows that the dead man’s brother is sworn to vengeance, bound by his own code as she is by hers. The pursuit plays out against the backdrop of a bleak and unforgiving world, with glimpses of hope and beauty amidst the shambling horrors that lurk in wait for the unwary.

It’s written in an unusual way, but one that you become accustomed to quite quickly and actually helps set the tone of the story. Temple’s a vivid character, brought to life by Bell’s elegant and evocative storytelling and overall Reapers will surprise you, as it did me, in the best possible way whether you’re a fan of dystopian fiction or not.

Zombie Britannica - Thomas Emson

In 2009, Canadian researchers warned that a zombie plague would wipe out civilisation.. unless we were ready. We weren't.

As temperatures reach unprecedented levels, the dead rise- and eath the living. There is no warning. There is no time to prepare. And with tens of thousands dead or infected, another waking nightmare comes to terrorise the survivors- the victims now rise up, a new wave of zombies hungry for human flesh.

As the nation teeters on the edge of extinction, those who survived the onslaught fight for their lives, and for the lives of their loved ones..


When Thomas Emson’s zombie apocalypse hits the UK, sweltering in the hottest summer on record, it hits with a bang. It hits the ground running, the Usain Bolt of apocalyptic visions. By the end of the second page the body count is in the hundreds, and the zombie tide is flowing unchecked through the capital cities, a tsunami of gnashing teeth and spurting fluids.

ZB begins with working mom Carrie’s story as she sets out to make her way back home, where her young daughter is hiding from the dead and her good for nothing father and his newfound hunger for living flesh. Her story is the central theme but it shares ZB with two other windows into the apocalypse.

In Wales, the initially surly and emotionally stunted Vincent, struggling to connect with the girl he fancies, reluctantly shows her around the local castle, unaware that its walls will save their lives long before their first kiss.

On the congested highways outside of Glasgow, a dysfunctional argues their way to the airport, heading for a traffic jam that will see them lose far more than their seat on the ‘plane.

ZB reads at a ferocious pace, reflecting the pace at which the apocalypse spreads. This is no gradual rising; all around the country the dead erupt from the earth, hungry for flesh.

It’s a classic scenario and one that lets Emson explore the effect the psychological trauma of seeing a horde of ragged, decomposing cannibals feasting on the living would have on people; there’s no mistaking the dead for any kind of rampaging drug addicts or mysterious infectees here. As it would, the reaction varies from person to person, from group to group depending on the brand of psychosis hidden deep beneath the skein of their mundane, everyday selves, brought violently to the fore as their minds try to process armageddon. Sure, it calls for you to take a leap of faith on a few points, but if you enjoy this genre then you would most likely understand that civilisation is a veneer, and one that gore encrusted nails would quickly scratch away.

Zombie Britannica is an incredibly easy and more-ish read; fast, edgy and bloody good fun.

By the way, the 2009 study into a zombie attack that the blurb (italics above) refers to can be found here if you're interested.

In beauty, like the night - Norman Partridge - The Living Dead (SSM)

One of the 34 short stories comprising ‘The Living Dead’, I chose to read this more or lessly at random, although it’s safe to say the title played a part in the decision making process.

Set in the aftermath of a zombie outbreak, it’s the story of a young media type named Nathan who, on the verge of having the perfect apocalypse hideaway, finds that the zombies he’s inadvertently sharing the island with have a very different agenda.

Nathan’s character is quickly established, and the situation is built with successive strokes, before it’s all shaken up as the zombies make themselves known. And they’re the stars of the show, defying expectations and being suitably bitey. They rock Nathan’s world, and his descent into the legion of the living dead begins.

It’s quick, gripping and fun – everything a short story needs to be. Now to read the rest!

Plague of the Dead - Z A Recht

The end begins with an unprecedented viral outbreak.

Morningstar. The infected are subject to delirium, fever, violent behaviour... anda one hundred percent mortality rate.

But the end is only the beginning.

The victims return from death to walk the earth. When a massive military operation fails to contain the plague of the living dead, it escalates into a worldwide pandemic.
Now, a single law of Nature dominates the global landscape: Live or die, kill or be killed.
On one side of the world, thousands of miles from home, a battle-hardened general surveys the remnants of his command: a young medic, a veteran photographer, a brash private, and dozens of refugees- all are his responsibility. While in the United States, an army colonel discovers the darker side of Morningstar and collaborates with a well-known journalist to leak the information to the public...

The first thing that drew me to Plague was the cover- the luminescent green skull that dominates the front cover, biohazard symbol in eye, is pretty hard to ignore. The promise of a zombie driven apocalypse sealed the deal and, book in hand, I retreated to the sofa.

It opens with an exchange of emails between two of the principal characters that provides the background for the initial encounter; the first chapter is a clever, atmospheric vehicle to flesh out the premise of the story.

Matters leap on from there to a situation where the outbreaks have spread and the overstretched army (with scant support from either navy or airforce- must be a recession) are trying to contain the epidemic. But they’re not prepared for the scale of it, nor the true nature of the infected, and their quarantine is broken. The infected give them no respite, forcing them onto the back foot and leaving them desperate to disengage and regroup.

The two main plotlines run parallel to each other, and between the two an image of civilisation teetering on the brink of collapse is built up. The stories are slowly woven together, although by the time this happens the dead are ascendant and the characters are facing hard decisions and the bitter reality of life at ground zero as the familiar trappings of modern life are torn away.
I really enjoyed how the nature of Morningstar and how it reacts with the host body was gradually explained; it also sets up an intelligent twist on the fast or slow zombie debate by presenting a plausible scenario for having both types, and it works really well. I’ve no doubt the concept will be borrowed by others in due course.

The characters are a bit ‘thin’ to start off with, and some remain so over the course of things, but I was having too much fun for this or the occasional pinch of salt to bother me. It would have been nice for some of the deaths to have more of an impact, but red shirts and zombies go together like peas and carrots.

Plague’s a blast of zombie fuelled mayhem that injects some interesting new ideas into the mix, and I’m glad it’s being re-released by Simon & Schuster/ Permuted Press. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for ‘Thunder and Ashes’ (due November).

Matt talks braaaains...uhm, zombies

I love the fact that we have this reservoir of untapped talent we can call on to talk to us about all manner of weird stuffs. In this instance, Matt (THE Teen Librarian) chats about Zombies.

When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth

In extreme circumstances, the assailants can be stopped by removing the head or destroying the brain. I will repeat that: by removing the head or destroying the brain.

It shall also be qualified as attempted murder the employment which may be made against any person of substances which, without causing actual death, produce a lethargic coma more or less prolonged. If, after the person had been buried, the act shall be considered murder no matter what result follows. Article 249 of the Haitian Penal Code

Liches, Revenants, Undead – they have many names but none more chilling than Zombie.

The first zombie-related book I can remember reading was a collection of short stories called Zombie edited by Peter Haining, it was published in 1985 so I would have been about 11 or 12. These stories (or the ones that I can still remember) focused on the traditional zombies of Voodoo myth, the dead raised up to do the bidding of their masters, it was in this book that I learned that salt would send a zombie back to its grave. On the strength of Zombie I purchased the novelisation of Dawn of the Dead by George Romero. I can still remember the cover – it was black and white with the title in blood red, it gave me nightmares.

After that zombies sank into the background, they were always in the movies with George Romero tinkering away at what he is best known for and the remakes of the first films that introduced running zombies – totally going against the accepted view of the undead as shambling, unstoppable monsters.

I think that zombies are the most horrific in the pantheon of monsters we know. With werewolves we can remember the words: Even a man who is pure in heart, and says his prayers by night, can become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms, and the autumn moon is bright. They can be stopped with wolfsbane and silver, they can even be cured. Vampires are either tragic or evil but still operating to rules we can understand.

Then we come to zombies: they are pitiless, unstoppable and can look like our best friend, our dearest love, but their hunger is insatiable.

The first zombie-related book I read this year was the excellent Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan, set in a post zombie-apocalypse world it shows how humanity has adapted to survive in a world where they are surrounded by what they now call the Unconsecrated.

Closer to home are The Beautiful Dead a new series by Eden Maguire, the first two books Jonas and Arizona are out now. These books have a totally different slant on the undead, not the mindless revenants of myth, they are returned to find out why and how they died. Aided by Darina, their schoolmate and only person alive that knows that they have returned. The Beautiful Dead mixes mystery, murder and melancholy with themes of love and loss.

The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z by Max Brooks detail how to survive zombie attacks and what happened during and after the Zom-pocalypse. Charlie Higson brings zombie terror to the streets of London with The Enemy - the first in a new series of novels about a world where everyone over the age of 14 is dead or a zombie hungry for the flesh of a the young.

In the 1970’s when the film Dawn of the Dead was released, zombies were a satire on the mindless consumerism of the people that flocked mindlessly to America’s shopping malls. These days the consumerism is still there but zombies can be seen more as a metaphor for the credit crunch, it was a long time in coming but almost everybody was affected (infected).

Nobody knows where or how the Undead plague started but with the current crop of books rising from the dead I know one thing -no matter how far we travel we are never alone for the dead travel with us!

Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection - Don Roff

The year is 2012, and what starts as a pervasive and inexplicable illness ends up as a zombie infestation that devastates the world's population. Taking the form of an illustrated journal found in the aftermath of the attack, this pulse-pounding, suspenseful tale of zombie apocalypse follows biologist Dr Robert Twombly as he flees from city to countryside and heads north to Canada, where -- he hopes -- the living dead will be slowed by the colder climate. Encountering scattered humans and scores of the infected along the way, he fills his notebook with graphic drawings of zombies and careful observations of their behaviour, along with terrifying tales of survival.

Being a bit of a zombie groupie, I've been following the release of Zombies: via Don's Facebook page for a while now, so I was stoked to receive a copy on Saturday morning. And since I was home alone, I thought I'd just sit for a moment to flip through it while I finished my coffee.

It goes without saying that a refill and a sneaky bowl of Cheerios later, Zombies: had been suitably devoured. As the blurb says, the book takes the form of an illustrated, handwritten journal kept by Dr Twombly as he seeks refuge from the burgeoning zombie epidemic. It's a nice concept, written in a way that suggests an academic who's trying to hold it together while facing up to the bleak reality that he's one mistake away from being a takeaway. There are some interesting ideas, not least of which is the probable cause of the outbreak- an idea which, unlike some previous zingers from the annals of zombie history, has the bittersweet aftertaste of satirical truth to it.

Dr Twombly's horror at what is happening around him is nicely contrasted by the vestiges of his clinical training as he records his thoughts about the biomechanics of the infection while weighing up whether a shovel or baseball bat is more effective for personal defense. There's plenty of the good stuff you'd want from a zombie apocalypse- streets choked with zombies, survival nuts going mental, gnawed off limbs, ongoing decomposition, set against and balanced out by Twombly's horrified and reluctantly pragmatic approach to surviving the epidemic.

Chris Lane's illustrations provide some wonderfully coloured, gory punctuation to the story and have a rough edge to them that lets them blend in nicely with the concept.

Zombies throws out some good ideas and is a punchy, interesting read- and while fun, I reckon it deserves, and will be even better on, a second reading. Welcome to a permanent home on my zombie shelf, Dr Twombly.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth - Carrie Ryan

In Mary's world there are simple truths.

The Sisterhood always knows best.

The Guardians will protect and serve.

The Unconsecrated will never relent.

And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth.

But, slowly, Mary's truths are failing her. She's learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power, and about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness. When the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, she must choose between her village and her future-between the one she loves and the one who loves her.

And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded in so much death?

Liz read this little gem a while back, and it had been winking at me from the shelf for far too long, so when I found myself sans book in hand and in need of a fix of Z, it fell into my hand..

In Forest we meet Mary, a young girl just reaching marrying age in the Village. The village lies behind guarded fences, fences that protect them from the zombie horde beyond, a horde they call the Unconsecrated.

The Sisterhood, self appointed guardians of the village, are a secretive order of nuns who manipulate and bully their charges to maintain the status quo of the village for the sake of the greater good. Their influence stains the pages with a quietly menacing claustrophobia, creating a distinct and memorable feel for the village and an immediate empathy for Mary.

The expected pattern of Mary’s life is turned upside down early on when her mother succumbs to a moment of madness and is infected. With the blame shifted to her, Mary finds herself with little choice but to entertain the possibility of a life within the sisterhood, relinquishing her unrequited love for Travis, something her inquisitive and impetuous nature chafes against.

Hints of the sisterhood’s secrets and life beyond the village vie for her attention as she cares for the injured Travis. However, zombies are an implacable enemy and when the inevitable happens, it’s the start of a desperate flight for survival.

While the threat posed by the zombies is constant and well described, Mary’s warring emotions, stoked by their ever-present threat and the proximity of Travis, are the predominant theme and, while she remained a sympathetic character, it did chafe at times. But maybe that's just me.

All in though, I enjoyed it. It’s a well written, engaging and fresh perspective on the increasingly popular Zombie Apocalypse scenario, with the characters fully immersed in an enigmatic and unravelling world, plenty of gnashing zombies (who remain threatening throughout) and a fair sprinkling of pleasing decapitations, the sudden violence surrounding them all the more shocking for the interludes of relative quiet and introspection.

Biohell, Andy Remic

The City: an entire planet teeming with corruption, guns, sex and designer drugs. Humans are upgraded by the injection of microscopic nanobots, courtesy of new technology from the Nano–Tek corporation, but when this highly desirable technology heads onto the black market, millions of people inject themselves with pirated biomods- and transform into zombies. Now they roam the streets, out for blood, packing shotguns and bombs. The Combat-K squad are dropped into this warzone to uncover what’s turned the planet into a wasteland of murder and mutations, and soon their focus is on the darkness at the Nano-Tek corporation itself.


This was my first foray into the world of Combat K. I fished it off my ‘too many books, too little time’ shelf and, feeling a bit sheepish about the dust I’d allowed to gather –sorry Andy-, I cracked it open immediately. Coming straight off my latest bout of 40K adulation, the first chapter or so was a short, sharp bout of cold turkey.

Once the brain cramps wore off and I let myself go with the flow, the pages just kept turning. I hardly noticed the insanely bumpy flight to Malta; my mind was in zombie country, marvelling at the sheer amount of splatter and general chaos crammed between the two covers. It’s is a pedal-to-the-metal smorgasbord of mutants, zombies, killer androids, explosions, gunfire, tanks, giant cyborgs -and a lot of puss. There’s even a twisted romance grotesque enough to be strangely endearing.

Biohell plays out across The City, a lawless urban jungle that spans an entire planet, a teeming hive where almost a generous slice of its population have succumbed to the lure of Biomods, the gene-manipulating nanobots that carry the promise of a better body and a better life… no surgery required, just a quick injection... Once the Biomods begin their rampage, their world goes straight to hell, without passing go or collecting $200. It's not pretty, but then, when you've got zombies toting RPG's, it was never going to be.

Each of the Combat K squad are drawn into this maelstrom through a combination of vengeance, love and betrayal, forced to put aside their differences in order to survive. They’re certainly not the chisel jawed heroes of classic sci-fi adventures; they’re flawed, immoral, fallible and occasionally demented, but they fit the world they live in.

Biohell was a treat to read, a refreshing blast of unadulterated, violent fun*.
It does what it says on the box! You can read an extract here.

*And I’m not just saying that because it’s got zombies with guns.

Musings on the Glorious Dead

The Grandmaster of Zombie - George Romero

Has there ever been a cooler word than zombie?

I’m not talking about the deeper, historic-cum-religious origins of the word, I’m talking about the sound of it. Go on, say it out loud. Zombie. It’s strangely comforting, yet still thrilling. Like a mouthful of warm chocolate laced with chilli.

The first zombies I ever saw were courtesy of Night of the Living Dead, having managed to hire a copy despite being underage - veritable larceny back then in the dogdays of the '80's. They scared the pants off me….right up until I realised that I actually wanted the zombies to win. It was a turning point for me. Looking back now, I reckon that brief pause where I sat frozen on the couch, popcorn falling out of my mouth, was the moment I began looking at things, including people, from my own perspective rather than the mainstream point of view; you could say zombies made me the person I am today.

My dvd cabinet attests to the fact that I’ll watch any movie that has zombies lurching about the place, whether they’ve been raised through sorcery or ritual, anointed with toxic waste, infected by aliens or evicted from an overfull hell. I have my own Zombie Apocalypse Survival Plan wedged in amongst the various books, comics, sketches and role playing games featuring my rotten lovelies.

The issue I have with zombies these days is that no one thinks they’re scary anymore. They’ve become horror’s goofy cousin, when they should be its evil twin with the chainsaw fetish.

The fear factor, that sense of creeping dread and terror, needs to be injected back into the genre. IMHO, writers and filmmakers haven’t realised that the terror of a zombie apocalypse doesn’t lie with heavily armed survivors, squabbling over a box of candy in the looted mall after the fact.

It’s there when the newly risen dead first begin walking the streets, when you watch as the parameters and certainties of life as you know it crumble. It’s about eating your supper while dead hands smear blood on your windows. The barking dog who suddenly goes quiet. The man sitting behind you on the bus who coughs incessantly, the sound wet and fractured. The scream from the back of the crowd as you wait for the tube.

Perhaps it’s time for me to put pen to paper and start putting together my very own undead opus.

Now that’s a scary thought.

The Devil's Plague, Mark Beynon

This is Mark’s debut novel and is part of Abaddon Books’ Tomes of the Dead series (although the books are generally standalones ).

I’m a fan of the zombie apocalypse genre and couldn’t resist tucking into this after reading the back-cover blurb, which is strangely hard to come by on Abaddon’s website.

It’s set during the English Civil War and centres around a diabolic pact made by Cromwell- in return fro his soul, he's been given control of a demonic army, the (wonderfully named) Kryfangan. But, unknown to Cromwell, aside from an unquenchable thirst for violence, the army brings with it the titular plague, which causes their victims to rise as zombies, who in turn seek vengeance on the demons, raising their own army the old fashioned zombie way.

The story follows a troupe of actors who fall in with Charles Stuart, rightful heir to the throne, falling foul of Cromwell and his legion in the process. They set off to escort Charles to Portsmouth, but their route is beset by Parliamentarian patrols, zombies and witch hunters, taking them through the bleak slaughterhouse formerly known as London.

It’s a well paced, entertaining read and Mark’s future work will undoubtedly benefit from the experience. While I only got to know the secondary characters in passing, and some of the dialogue could have been a bit punchier, these were minor issues and certainly didn’t detract from my enjoyment of a strong debut from Mark.