Customer Reviews

The Living Dead

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(20)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

What could be more enjoyable than a Zombie story anthology? How about enjoying one during and after Hurricane Ike, with no power and candlelight?? How about one that includes three of my all-time fav authors (Dan Simmons, George R. R. Martin and Stephen King)? How about one nearly 500 pages long (at least the ARC is)? How about one edited by John Joseph Adams, who also brought us the anthologies Seeds of Change and Wastelands (which, yes, I need to finish).

Many of these stories have been previously published, but almost all were new to me. One obvious component: sex angles and zombies seem to mix. Not all include that perspective, but this is certainly not PG-13.

My favorites from this LARGE collection were Ghost Dance by Sherman Alexie, The Third Dead Body by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Malthusian's Zombie by Jeffrey Ford, Home Delivery by Stephen King, Deadman's Road by Joe R. Lansdale, The Song the Zombie Sang by Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg.

This review originally appeared on duskbeforethedawn.net.Thoughts on each story:

* This Year's Class Picture by Dan Simmons: the author of the Hyperion series plus the Illiad/Olympus duology tells the tale of Ms. Geiss, teacher extraordinaire, continuing to teach her class and recruit new students even though they and most of the rest in the city are dead and zombies. The repetition of the lessons and Ms. Geiss persistence are well told.
* Some Zombie Contingency Plans by Kelly Link: interestingly written and well paced story of Soap the ex-con with a painting, who always has a contingency plan against zombies and several other possibilities; the ending threw me (re-read the final paragraph until my eyes hurt), but the journey to the end was enjoyable, as Soap crashes Carly's party and cons her.
* Death and Suffrage by Dale Bailey; zombies dig their way out to vote, based on a presidential campaign manager's repressed memories being brought to the fore after a little girl's accidental shooting. If only the dead would vote this November...
* Ghost Dance by Sherman Alexie; one of my favorites, though I wish it were longer. Custer's army arises from the dead, drawn by murdered Indian blood, and an FBI agent named Edgar (not Mulder) has visions of their lives and the damage/murder that they do.
* Blossom by David J. Schow; okey-dokey! A little kinky sex gone awry turns a beautiful girl into a dead girl and then into a man-eating zombie. Descriptive, to say the least!
* The Third Dead Body by Nina Kiriki Hoffman; a zombie story from the zombie's point of view; a murdered hooker, cursed by her voodoo grandma, must love the man that killed her and rises from the grave to find him. Very well written and entertaining.
* The Dead by Michael Swanwick; the third zombie + sex story in a row, interesting grouping, Mr. Adams. The business side of using cheap zombies for everything - factory workers, stunt doubles...and, yes, as call girls/guys. Good character work in this story.
* The Dead Kid by Darrell Schweitzer; school age bullies who keep `the dead kid' in their forest fort put one young man through a right of passage; should he abuse the zombie dead kid like the other gang members or save him?
* Malthusian's Zombie by Jeffrey Ford; Mr. Ford bases this on a book by Julian Jaynes (which I actually have in my possession, and have always thought it would be a great basis for a story). A well written slight of hand, featuring mind programming that turned soldiers to zombies in a secret government project, following the theories of Dr. Jaynes.
* Beautiful Stuff by Susan Palwick; a 9/11-ish story about what the dead would say to the living about revenge and death. Nicely done.
* Sex, Death and Starshine by Clive Barker; the upcoming death of a theater motivates it's dead patrons and stars to gather for one last performance and viewing, taking some of the living with them;
* Stockholm Syndrome by David Tallerman; surviving human gets sympathetic with a semi-intelligent zombie who reminds him of his dead son...even though the zombie is trying to break into other humans houses.
* Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead by Joe Hill; two former lovers, one now married, on the set of Dawn of the Dead as extras. No real zombies, just remembrances of how things used to be and wishful thinking of how things could have been.
* Those Who Seek Forgiveness by Laurell K. Hamilton; I enjoyed the first few Anita Blake novels, before they became overly porno. This story hearkens back to her early work, where she deftly describes Anita the animator, the woman doing a job that she is bound to do, explaining zombies and how they work to the living and raising the dead.
* In Beauty, Like the Night by Norman Partridge; hmmm...a porn mag star on an island where he'd planned to weather any disaster with his centerfold girls turns into...you guess it...night of the living porn queen.
* Prairie by Brian Evenson; a poetically written parable of exploration in the new world, but instead of indians we find the walking dead;
* Everything Is Better with Zombies by Hannah Wolf Bowen; an enjoyable tale of high school kids, imagining zombies at every grave of their small town cemetery, to take their minds off of their other problems.
* Home Delivery by Stephen King; a excellent tale from the master, an isolated Maine (of course) island community, that bands together when a zombie plague from space attacks the rest of the world. The characterization and back story are indicative of King's other great works.
* Less Than Zombie by Douglas E. Winter; from the intro, this is a mod of another story by Bret Easton Ellis, a tale of people in LA, getting high, and believing if they kill their friends in gruesome ways, they will come back as zombies. Not one of my favs of the collection.
* Sparks Fly Upward by Lisa Morton; the politics of over population and abortion in an isolated colony after a zombie outbreak told from the diary of the mother. An unique zombie story for this and any other collection, and exceptionally well written.
* Meathouse Man by George R. R. Martin; a sad short story by one of my favorite authors, featuring a young man who can run corpses to do multiple jobs, but all he wants his to find his true love. His search takes him to many jobs, many worlds, and to the meathouse, where corpses respond to his needs. A sad tale, but as always well paced with a well brought out leading character.
* Deadman's Road by Joe R. Lansdale; a Texas western zombie tale, with the resolute Reverend Jebidiah Rains, part gunslinger, part warrior of God, always fighter of evil. He helps a deputy escort a prisoner down Deadman's Road, in search of an evil zombie who was a killer and bully when alive.
* The Skull-Faced Boy by David Barr Kirtley; superbly written from the point of view of an intelligent zombie (his brain wasn't eaten) who has to decide if he is on the side of the living (his father) or the dead (his friend). The zombies organize behind the intelligent zombies!
* The Age of Sorrow by Nancy Kilpatrick; instead of being the last man on earth, what about being the last woman on earth? well-imagined, nicely written, a sad downward spiral, as one would realistically expect.
* Bitter Grounds by Neil Gaiman; a fantasy of drifting, where the people that you meet you are supposed to meet, leading you on a path to voodoo lovers and zombie powder taking a professor's place at a conference in New Orleans.
* She's Taking Her Tits to the Grave by Catherine Cheek; a lively tale of a blonde L.A. barbie, called back from the dead but she doesn't know who did it. She stumbles from lover to husband trying to find out who, decaying all the way (except for the silicone).
* Dead Like Me by Adam by Troy Castro; if you want to live amidst a zombie plague, pretend to be dead. A somewhat lackluster self-help manual.
* Zora and the Zombie by Andy Duncan; voodoo and zombies in Haiti around Roosevelt's time. Zora seeks to solve the puzzle of Felicia, a woman found after she was thought dead 30 years, and of the voodoo gods that surround Haiti. The same coffee girls as in Gaiman's story are mentioned here as well!.
* Calcutta, Lord of Nerves by Poppy Z. Brite; "It seemed to me that the dead were among the best-fed citizens of Calcutta." A great line from a lyrically written tour through Calcutta after the zombies came. The goddess Kali worshiped by the living and the dead.
* Followed by Will McIntosh; corpses follow around the well off, or people who have used or invested in something that causes other people to suffer. One of the shortest, but sweet.
* The Song the Zombie Sang by Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg; one of the best of the bunch. A skilled musician kept animated after his death to perform, his music technically accurate but not passionate, encounters a live equal as a musician who sees through his charade and pain.
* Passion Play by Nancy Holder; we've been to Oberammerau and seen the Passionspielhaus. I haven't seen the play but the way Ms. Holder describes the event of having zombies in the play portraying Christ crucified on the cross is outstanding. The play has been done since the time of the plague....the plague returns when the zombies are treated inhumanely, even though given the sacrement from a sympathetic priest. Well done.
* Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man by Scott Edelman; stories of a writer locked in a library as the world around him deteriorates overrun by zombies.
* How the Day Runs Down by John Langan; the "Our Town" Stage Manager narrates the zombie invasion of the town, and shoots a few zombies of his own. Explanation, characters with stories, a well written parallel.

Do not buy this book on your kindle!!! It is missing many stories from the actual paperback book. And most of the stories missing are the best ones. It is a rip off and I wish I could get my money back. Especially since the book is about the same price as the kindle edition.

This book is definitely hit or miss. As other reviewers have stated, it starts off with "This Year's Class Picture" by Dan Simmons, which is a fantastic short story. It won the Stoker, the World Fantasy, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the japanese version won the Seiun award.

However, after that the book is all down hill. All of it. No other story comes close to the first one, except perhaps "Sex, Death, and Starshine" by Clive Barker which was nearly as good.
The George R.R. Martin piece, and the Stephen King piece are mostly in there to sell the book, not for any great impact or memorable story-telling. I can't even remember the plot of the Stephen King piece as I write this, and I just finished the book last week!

I love zombies. I love zombie stories. This book, though, isn't what I had hoped it would be. As many reviewers have pointed out, "zombies" aren't even in all of the short stories, some just have the word "zombie" in the title, and somehow they got included. Yes, yes, it is a 'play on words' that living people can be 'dead to the world'. haha. Jokes on me I guess, for purchasing a book I thought would be about the undead.

Overall I am glad I read the 2 or three pieces that were great, I actually skipped one or two after the first paragraphs, and the rest were just ho-hum time-fillers to help me drift off to sleep in boredom.

Ok, this book is completely inane.
I read story after story, some of which don't even contain zombies. Often these short stories are very pretentious and pseudo-artistic, most are unreadable.

Do you like zombies that rise from the grave to vote?
Do you like teachers trying to educate zombie children and rewarding them w/ chicken nuggets made of humans?
Do you like ex-cons who patter on for pages about nothing?
Do you like zombies who eat flowers and piddle around in apartments?

If so, this book is for you.

If not, avoid at all costs! Reading this book made me wish for a zombie apocalypse to put me out of my misery.

I really liked this anthology when I borrowed a copy from a friend, I bought the second volume and thought it was OK. I missed some of the stories in the first volume and picked up the kindle edition- big mistake. The best stories are left out of the kindle version with no indication that anything was different between the two media. I hope this isn't a trend. Amazon, to their credit, handled my complaint right away and refunded the $3.

The title of the book is a bit decpetive if you are a zombie genre fan. Many of the short stories in the book are only related to that topic in the most obscure way. In one story, about an art thief, the main character dwells on the idea of zombies along with other catastrophies, natural and supernatural. Nary an undead ever enters the tale. In another the two main characters are playing extras in a George Romero film, acting as zombies. That is it. Some of the stories were actually quite good, others....not so much. For the price it is definitely not worth it if you are looking for a good zombie read.

Even though they are being published at an incredibly fast rate and there are already 100's already printed, it is sometimes difficult to find a very well written, full length zombie novel. Hence, the zombie anthology and the many short stories of everyones favorite new face of horror.
"The Living Dead" is a collection of 34 zombie themed short stories, and, as is typical with any anthology, some of these stories are amazing, some are just ok, and even a few are downright boring and a struggle to get through. Unfortunately for "The Living Dead" a good majority of the stories tend to lean towards the boring side.
And this is where I think the editor (John Joseph Adams) shot himself in the foot. Stating that he wanted to collect a series of "different" zombie stories led to this books downfall (at least in my eyes).
I understand his grand plan and the idea to bring the reader to read atypical snippets of the undead, but sometimes, even that idea fails. In this book of 34 stories, I counted a total of 7 stories that were so bizarre, so badly written, or just plain ridiculous. "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" has NOTHING to do with zombies aside from mentioning th word a few times, "Less Than Zombie" is utter trash, following the mind of a drugged out stoner (full of ridiculous run on sentences and story line that made absolutly no sense whatsoever) and "Everything is Better with Zombies", a short story that asks a question but NEVER answers it! Not to mention "Meathouse Man", "The Song the Zombie Sang" and "Bitter Grounds" that made me realize, I am in fact a zombie purist.
That's not to say there weren't a few good stories within this anthology. Stephen King's "Home Delivery" was (in typical King fashion) a great and entertaining read as were "Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man" and the fantastic, "World War Z"-esque "How the Day Runs Down"
Overall, I wasn't exactly thrilled with "The Living Dead" but at the same time, I wasn't so frustrated with it that I quit reading it. I guess I would suggest this book if, like me, you;re a zombie fan and want to expand your library on the subject, but don't expect to be completely blown away by it either.

Some stories are just better than others. Good book to have on bedside table for quick zombie fix before zzzzz. I skip around, therefore have yet to read the whole book. I've heard Living Dead 2 is more consistant. I'm excited to discover if this is true.

I was expecting a riveting collection of zombie apocalypse, survival stories, epics dedicated to the heart-pounding plights of survivors--there's only three or four of those in the book. The rest are zombie-LIKE stories, tales empathizing zombies more as voodoo/defeated/forlorn souls than anything else. Sadly, those stories are terribly boring. Buy this book for the one-fifth of stories that won't waste your time.

Far too often authors have over-saturated the horror genre with metaphors.
They seem to have gotten their priorities mixed up.
It's one thing to create a theme drawn from real life to
enhance the story. But I believe it should serve the story first
rather than the other way around.

The moment I detect an author is making a "statement", that its
obviousness is as blaring as a neon sign, I'll close the book and
toss the damn thing where it belongs: in the garbage. I mean, c'mon, zombies
that vote? Pleeeeease.

But since I'd been expecting the book to contain some good stories, which, to my
relief, there were (i.e. Deadman's Road and Home Delivery - both excellent stories),
I'd made an exception. I decided not to just toss the whole thing in the trash,
but I skimmed a lot, more than I usually do. Again, I don't have a problem with
symbolism if it's for the sake of the story. But, alas, I'm afraid too often
in this book the zombies are, themselves, cannibalized by their collegiate-minded
creators.

To hell with psychological or sociological interpretations and
reinterpretations of zombies, or vampires or werewolves for that matter.
These are monsters, monsters that invade our nightmares. They await us in dark
corners or behind bushes alongside the neighbor's house. They're the boogeyman
in the closet, or the bloodthirsty demon lurking under our beds. That's what they're
ALL about. Ancient, amorphous things stemming from our midbrains, given shape by
imagination, and driven by straightforward storytelling. Almost half the stories in
this book suggest, to me at least, that a lot of authors seemed to have either
forgotten or have ignored that idea altogether.