Customer Reviews

Brainchild: A Collection of Artifacts

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Brainchild: A Collection of Artifacts is an insightful window into what life might be like after the rise of the dead. Films such as Dawn of the Dead or 28 Days Later allow you to follow one group of survivors through such a world, but your viewpoint is restricted to what they can see.

This volume has more of a scattershot approach. As the title suggests, it is an almost random collection of journals, images, diaries, and stories about the rise. These are the artifacts referenced in the title. The literary elements range from nail-biting drama, to introspective journals, while the art runs the gamut from drawings done by a small child to photorealistic pictures of the walking dead.

Not everything is perfect about the book. For one, the role of the reader is somewhat undefined. If this is a collection of artifacts, how were they collected? Where is the reader that he can view these as artifacts, since the stories take place in the present day?

Another slight complaint centers on an excellent piece talking about the evolution of the zombie throughout films. Until I got to that piece, I was exploring this world, eager to uncover more about the walking dead and the survivors and victims. Once I got to the essay, I was suddenly back in the real world, reading an essay about zombie movies.

Don't get me wrong. I like zombie movies. And it's a good essay. But I resented the intrusion. I would've preferred to see that essay at the end of the collection, or at the beginning.

Despite these minor quibbles about the collection, it is still a remarkable piece, and one I am glad to own. For fans of roleplaying games, especially horror based ones such as All Flesh Must Be Eaten or Call of Cthulhu, it's a great thing to let your players flip through while preparing for a game.

This book is a true gem.

Beautifully presented, with artwork to die for. A lot of love has gone into the production of this book.

To be honest, I picked this up, mainly, to read the story by Rebecca Brock (a great writer) but found a hell of a lot more within it.

Highly recommended for zombie, horror and arthouse fans, alike.

IF you are a zombie lover this book is for you. The graphics are outstanding. Go into the minds of the zombies and stand back as the stories unfold to present to the reader a reflection of the bits and pieces of the zombie world. Will you be able to escape Their World and return to the present?

Let me start by saying that the large part of the writing in this book is well done, engaging and fairly frightening. The problem is that it's all almost dramatically short. I understand that the book is intended to be a collection of flashes, journal-like stories... but several of the stories are hardly a page in length and in all reality there are a good handful that are hardly better than if written by high school students.

And while the essay in the middle of the book brings up some interesting points, it detracts from the feel of the book as a whole. In truth, it reads like an undergrad's film class mid-term, and a B grade one at that. It's core point is hidden behind over-numerous and too-brief referrences, and by the end of it I was unsure as to whether the author was a feminist on a (decidedly forced) gender-in-zombie-film tirade or a devout fan of the genre.

And how people can be raving over the art work is a mystery to me as well. With the VERY notable exception of one or two of the artists, the work is amateur at best and abysmal at worst. The human figures are hackneyed, the compositions flawed and the techniques heavy handed. Had the editors simply solicited material from the upperclassmen of any reputable illustration department in any reputable art school in the country they'd have returned infinitely better results.

And having the inside of the back cover and the preceeding page used up as ad space? In a comic book maybe, but not in a book I just over-spent 15$ on. Way to further kill the atmosphere.

This book, in concept, could have been spectacular. By culling down the writers to the few that really shine and culling down the artists to the few who actually know what they're doing and then getting twice as much volume out of both, it would be well worth the money spent. As it is, I feel robbed by a largely student-level trade paperback and would have been better off buying another book in David Moody's Autmn series.

-t