Quirky Zombie

This is an interesting take on the usual zombie tale. It takes place 10 years after humanity has lost the war against the zombie hoards. It also takes place in Australia, which makes it feel different.

What makes it an interesting take is that living people are kind of coexisting with the undead. It’s clearly an uneasy existence as many of the zombies are intelligent and they are ruling the roost. They are called EVOLS, which stands for Extremely Violent Lucid Organisms. In the surviving remnants of humanity are a bunch of geeks and they have stuck a deal with the intelligent zombies to feed them cloned humans – tankbread.

Our main character is a courier and is asked by the local head honcho zombie to go to the Sydney Opera house to pick up something from the geeks holed up in there producing tankbread.  Things start to go wrong when he gets there ans he ends up escaping with Else, who’s a clone.

The Story then follows them across a dystopian Australia, complete with pocket of the living who are worse than the undead.

It’s written int he first person and for me it was a little but like Sam Spade crossed with Mad Max. A mix that sort of worked. The added into the mix is Else, who is basically like a newborn and her growing knowledge is written very well.

The story moved fast, with lots of characters being introduced and lots of issues with the living and the zombie hoards. The first paragraph of the book will completely grab you – ‘The Asian across the table from me is tearing great gobs of warm flesh from his girlfriend’s neck. Tendons and tissue hang from his mouth in bloody spaghetti strands while his jaw works tirelessly to consume. He chews her like gum.’

The only issue with the book is the end. It was a bit of an out of character ‘monster’ end. It was a 5 star start and middle, but a 3 star ending for me.

I will keep a look out for the author though. He’s self-published, and I really enjoyed his writing and his characterisation.