Monsters and Zombies

I'm just going to start with this: Ho-ly-shit. What a great read. This is the first zombie-themed writing I've really immersed myself in (I did, however, enjoy Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide, and I'm sure I'd love his World War Z book too) but this blog-style book really drew me in, particularly with its' leading zombie character, Gary. Yes, it was simple writing, yes it was almost (almost!) predictable in many ways, but I loved the tension and the fear Wellington manages to bring to his writing. He has an interesting attention to detail, and the incorporation of the female Somalian soldiers and the almost out of place mummy theme was interesting (Africa certainly crawls into America one way or another). Disregarding that, I felt the ending was as appropriate as possible, the looming onset of zombie-dom taking over our until recently quite humble protagonist, while he scripts his tragic memiors to a captive audience (at least, I was captivated). Beautiful. I wonder if all zombie novels are written to be as epic as possible (it makes sense, certainly) but I know a lot of them just... fall short? Pride and Prejudice and Zombies seemed gimmickey and I really hate every zombie movie I've ever seen, aside from Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland. Though, honestly, I don't know how many zombie fliques I've seen in the grand scheme of things.

I would love to know how the next two books pan out. Dekalb and all the characters of real interest are dead (or undead), and I'm almost itching to read what comprises a sequel. So few people are left in the world as it stands, it would be interesting to see how the story develops. But at the rate of reading a book a week in this class, I'm probably going to just stick those on the back-burner for now. This weeks reading felt more like a horror to me than did last week's Frankenstein, though the content is much the same, in that the 'bad guys' are either reanimated or scientists. Or, in the one case, both. I'm still not quite over Gary's general awesomeness.