The Dead Walk Diaries: Night [Paperback]

Joe Young (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2, 2007

The world changed forever in the course of one night, the first night of the zombie epidemic. A countless number of people were killed only to rise again as the walking dead. This collection of diaries are the first-hand accounts from people that witnessed what happened and describe in their own words what they experienced. Gathered from handwritten journals, reports, notes, audio and video recordings -the Dead Walk Diaries paints a vivid picture of the horror, atrocities, and chaos that occurred the first night the dead walked and attacked the living.

Product Details

• Paperback: 258 pages
• Publisher: CreateSpace (December 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1434818160
• ISBN-13: 978-1434818164
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,175,222 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bolt your doors and lock your windows. They're Coming., December 5, 2007

By 

nextgen - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dead Walk Diaries: Night (Paperback)

Upon first glance at author, Joe Young's book, "Dead Walk Diaries" a reader may be tempted to groan and pass it off as just another zombie story. If one were to make such a mistake, they would find themselves missing out on one of the freshest, most sincere stories in this genre to date.

Foregoing the speedy zombies of the twenty-first century, Joe Young returns to the mass of single-minded, lumbering corpses made famous by Romero. The formula used is a successful one: throw a bunch of innocent people amongst a mob of flesh-eating deadites and see how they do. What follows is an intense ride which grips you from the first scene and doesn't let go even days after you set it aside.

The book is set up as various journals, memos, and video feeds of individuals who are experiencing the first night of a zombie infestation. What Joe Young accomplishes with this novel approach to story telling is taking a played-out concept and giving it a fresh face. He manages to take a zombie story and make it about the people fighting for their lives. The fear, confusion, and sheer revulsion felt by those unfortunate souls who find themselves dropped into a living nightmare is brought forth in a very real way to the reader.

Joe Young becomes a ventriloquist of sorts, creating completely believable characters in an unimaginable scenario. Each journalist speaks with a clear and distinct voice, humanizing their plight. Each author experiences and reacts to their nightmare differently, causing the reader to momentarily forget that they are all written by the same hand. From the first character (a sweet, doomed, young lady by the name of Sara), to the last, you are given a glimpse into the dark secrets and naked emotions of some very real people, fleshed out with skill and aplomb.

Filled with poignancy, humor, and -- of course -- horror, Dead Walk Diaries gives the reader the guilty pleasure of delving into the personal thoughts of various realistic people who are struggling to survive a night of terror. Bolt your doors and lock your windows.

They're coming.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dear Diary, Today I was eaten., December 24, 2007

By 

Patrick S. Dorazio "Author of The Dark Trilogy" (Cincinnati, Ohio) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Dead Walk Diaries: Night (Paperback)

I debated on four or five stars for this surprisingly fun and brief compilation of individual's tales of the first night of the undead invasion.

This book is somewhat mysterious in that there is no publisher listed and no details about the author. Heading to the website all you get is the option of ordering the book and a few tidbits on it plus it gives the impression that the author has collected these stories from other people--the website asks you for your diary entry, making me wonder if this book is actually the collected works of several different authors writing under the pen name of Joe Young (not that I would presume as such, but one could easily draw that conclusion based on looking at the website).

I liked the sparseness of this work. Each of the entries allow you to form a skeleton of the overall attack by the living dead-how it may have started, the city these people dwell in, etc. We are also given a small amount of thread that ties each of the stories together--an example is a garage band blasting their instruments while the dead surround their house, which is one story and that is mentioned by a fleeing National Guardsmen in his story...and most of the tales have those sort of fleeting links that give this book a sense of cohesion.

I was worried when I got this that it was self published. Too often zombie books are self published and do not even come close to being edited properly. As I mentioned there was no publisher listed on the book itself. As I read it I was pleasantly surprised to discover very few misspellings and typos which usually run rampant in the self published world.

Again, I debated on four stars or five for this, and settled on five because this book explored a pretty wide variety of experiences. That was its biggest plus. We get a terrific cross section of short stories, each with a different take on things. We get the radio broadcast, a child's perspective, a National Guardsman, a Police Officer, and numerous regular citizens telling us how they survived (or did not survive).

Good stuff and it deserves a spot in your library if you enjoy zombie stories at all.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The dead walk diaries, April 9, 2008

By 

William A. Breining III "breining" (Somerville, TN . USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dead Walk Diaries: Night (Paperback)

The dead walk diaries was a fun quick little read. I enjoyed the different perspectives in each chapter. I have read a number of books about the walking dead and this was a pretty good read.