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Book Review: Delicious Zombie by Wol-vriey

 

Delicious Zombie by Wol-vriey

Burning Bulb Publishing, 2022

ISBN: 9781948278485

Available: paperback, Kindle edition

Buy: Amazon.com

 

Would you be okay with cannibalism if it would stop the aging process?

 

That’s the idea behind Delicious Zombie, a tour de splat that adds some new twists to the zombie apocalypse storyline.  The zombies are all humans that have been infected with a virus that makes them eat anything alive– nothing new there.  But, uninfected humans who eat zombies find that the aging process slows, and actually reverses, keeping everyone in their late 20s-early 30s.  Diseases like cancer?  A thing of the past, thanks to zombie meat.  All ills have been conquered, thanks to eating undead people that used to be normal human beings.

 

However, not everyone is happy about the idea of immortality, since it involves munching on your former neighbors.  Scientist Ethan Hackman and his companions Paula and Zoe lead a clandestine mission to Ohio to recover the cure for zombies, which has been hidden away by the powers that be.  It’s a question of whether they can survive, because a LOT of people don’t want the status quo changed.

 

This author has always excelled at writing fast-paced stories with a large dose of messiness, and this one is no exception.  What makes this one good is the author’s world-building: it’s quite the dystopia!  This is one story that actually makes the zombies sympathetic characters, which is unusual in the genre.  It’s a haunting place: there is a Church of Zombie, which preaches “digestion is salvation” ; the poor zombies are kept on farms for slaughter, and some people even keep a live zombie at home to cut off a piece of meat whenever they feel the urge.  It’s factory farming gone crazy.  At the grocery store, you go up to the deli counter and order whatever cut of a person you want.  Needless to say, serious ethical questions are present in this book!  That’s why the book is much more than the standard undead stories.  It’s not just the usual ‘plucky humans trying to survive a zombie plague,’  there’s a plotline with some real thought to it.  It’s enough to keep the reader engaged right through the last pages of the book.

 

Bottom line: if you like zombie stories and are hungry for one with some originality that will make you think, this one is the way to go.  Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on October 27, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Shagging the Boss by Rebecca Rowland

Shagging the Boss by Rebecca Rowland
Filthy Loot, 2022
ISBN-13: 978-1088029046
Available: Paperback ( Bookshop.org )

 

Before anyone starts quoting Austin Powers in a bad accent, the shagging Rebecca Rowland refers to is quite different. The title does fit the novella though, yet I can’t divulge too much. It’s unique and a quick read, easy for one sitting but this story stuck to me like a great meal– more on that later.

 

Publishing is a bloody business. It makes strolling through hell feel like petting puppies in a field of flowers. It’s not for the weak-hearted or those who want validation. When the unnamed main character arrives at a book conference, fresh in the field and looking for bites, she’s looking for a foot in the door, something to break into a world that is full of monsters of the human kind. What she finds isn’t exactly what LinkedIn typically suggests. A strange man, Daniel, greets her at a book convention and invites her back to his hotel room, but the favor he offers isn’t exactly the sexist situation that too often occurs in the corporate world. It’s something much different. He makes her an offer after she awakes to find he took something from her– something physical– but reassures her all will be well, because of what he is, a boogeyman of sorts. To be specific, a yara-ma-yha-who, a creature of opportunity who consumes their prey, only to expel them– somehow changed. To say more would ruin the novella’s magic. The relationship and interplay between the apprentice and Daniel is pure fun to read. The book begs to be completed in one enjoyable sitting (yet I’ve gone through it twice and picked up on some cool nuances I missed the first time).

 

Rowland has been moving like a banshee, editing anthologies left and right (her Generation-Exed is perfect for the best group of people out there!), but this is my first time reading her prose. It won’t be the last. Comparisons are not necessary, yet one could be drawn between Elizabeth Massie and Joe R. Lansdale due to the smooth writing and easy dialogue.

 

Highly recommended, especially for anyone who is involved in the shark-infested world of writing and publishing.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

Posted on December 17, 2022 by , Reply

Book Review: To Dust You Shall Return by Fred Venturini

cover art for To Dust You Shall Return by Fred Venturini

To Dust You Shall Return by Fred Venturini

Turner Publishing, 2021 (release date June 21)

ISBN: 9781684426348

Availability: Paperback, Kindle ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

If you only have the budget to purchase one book for the entire year, this is the one to buy.  To Dust You Shall Return is superior to everything else out there, might as well just hand the author the Stoker award for best horror novel of 2021 and skip the drawn-out nomination process.  It’s that good: other authors will be hard pressed to equal it.

 

Most of the story is set in Harlow, one of those Children of the Corn-type Midwestern towns you could drive through and not know if anyone actually lives there.  Curtis Quinn, an aging ex-Mafia hitman with a price on his head, is led there while on the trail of whoever butchered his beloved wife into pieces.  He suspects it’s a revenge hit to get to him, but what he finds in Harlow is much more sinister and terrifying than anything the Mafia could have dished out.  Harlow residents live in fear of the Mayor, a sadistic madman (or is he?) with inhuman powers.  The residents’ only hope is the legend of the Griffin, an outsider who may one day come to deliver the townspeople from the Mayor’s grasp.  Could Curtis, a cold-blooded killer, be that man, and is it somehow connected to his wife’s murder?

 

The story scores unbelievably high on every possible level, but the excitement and originality are the two best points.  After a brief prologue, the story shifts into high gear right away, and, in 352 pages, doesn’t let up.  There’s never a hint of a slowdown: this is the type of book you will keep reading well into the night, until exhaustion sets in.  For originality, Harlow itself is one of the most intriguing fictional towns ever invented; it’s an unusual cross between a communist community and Blake Crouch’s Wayward Pines.  Residents are provided for and given jobs, but the cost is never being able to leave the town, exceept for a forays lasting a brief hour or two.  The town is surrounded with razor wire and various traps to keep the people in.  If they do escape, rangers track them down and return them to Harlow, where they are ritually slaughtered in front of the townspeople in extremely painful and bloody ways.  This causes the book’s gore factor to run high at times, but it is always in service to the story, never gratuitous for the shock factor.  That said, some of the killings are as hardcore as anything Jack Ketchum ever wrote and will make readers cower in fear, praying to forget what they just read.

 

The characters and plot also sell themselves by their unpredictability: the story does not go where you would expect.  Numerous characters double-cross each other, and the book becomes a guessing game,  keeping the story engrossing.  The legend of the Griffin also helps drive the story’s unexpected twists and turns, as most stories with a creepy little town rarely use the “savior” angle.  It’s just another example of what sets this story apart from all the competition.  Bottom line: just buy this one, and prepare to be blown away.  You won’t be disappointed.  This is beyond highly recommended.

 

Contains: blood, gore, profanity, cannibalism, ritualistic torture.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on May 13, 2021 by , Reply
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