Customer Reviews

Raising Stony Mayhall

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Daryl Gregory is the kind of guy who writes a possessed Philip K. Dick into one of his books as a supporting character (not this one). He seems fascinated by human alterations - his first book was about people possessed by archetypes, his second was about transformation into mutants in a small Southern town (sort of), and his third novel is about people who have been turned into zombies. It provides a thesis to unify slow zombie and fast zombie fans, and examines the physics and metaphysics of being the living dead.

When people are first infected and turned, they go through a few days of fever and delirium while they lust for human flesh, so they stagger around and make weird sounds. After the fever breaks, they regain their minds, although sometimes with amnesia or personality alterations. At this point they no longer have homicidal impulses if they don't want to. So Stony, who studied his sister's medical texts and ran experiments to see why his body didn't break down, joins the L.D. (Living Dead) underground and meets all types of dead people while he is drawn slowly into L.D. politics.

Chris Roberson said, 'so good that I grieved when I got to the last page, because I wanted it to just go on and on.' It really is. Gregory's writing gets better with each book, and the plot never slows down or becomes predictable (except in that zombie trope way the fans all love).

The thing I love best about Gregory's work is that no matter how crazy the world he presents us with is, (there's a demon trapped inside you? your former self OD'd on a strange drug and left you with no memory? you're oozing mystical mucus?) the people in that world are REAL. Vivid characters are the thing I like best in a novel, and I love how Gregory's people aren't stiff, convenient sci-fi straw men. They act and feel how you imagine real people would under these bizarre circumstances.

Stony Mayhall is no exception. So you're the undead? It doesn't stop you from being annoyed by your sisters, wanting to be allowed off the farm, conducting scientific research, or writing fan fiction.

I don't want to spoil this book for you, so all I'm going to say is - it's kind of epic. You should pick it up.

I tend to judge a book based on how I feel at the exact moment that I've finished reading it and am closing it for the final time. I found myself awestruck - I truly loved reading this book.

I don't read a lot of fantasy and science fiction, but I do enjoy the occasional zombie book and I was initially concerned about the idea of an unconventional approach to zombie literature. I can now say that this is a unique and entertaining reimagining of the genre. I believe everyone will find something to enjoy about this book - at times it reads like The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (especially at the beginning and end of the book when we find ourselves in the farmlands of Iowa) and other times it could be an incredibly fun episode of The Walking Dead.

Overall, I highly recommend this book. The author did a great job of taking a tried and true genre and turning it on its head without losing sight of why it was so popular in the first place.

I really was not sure I wanted to read a Zombie novel because I didn't think I really would be at all interested in zombies. But this is really an awesome book. If you think you're anti-zomie or if you couldn't care less about zombies, don't let that keep you from reading this book. I could hardly put it down. I stayed up way too late because I couldn't wait to find out what would happen to Stony. I really cared about him. So the plot is great--a total page turner. But this novel is so much more...it made me think a lot--about society, about spirituality, about getting older, about who I really am (and I'm middle-aged, so it's tough to get me thinking new things in that area!). There is so much that is handled tenderly, affectionately, and spot on. Like what it's like to "come out" as a part of any marginalized community, what it's like to find your community (with all it's warts and all), what it's like to live in a world full of oppression, what it's like to discover you own deepest strengths--something no one can teach you. I even thought the adoption part of the story was treated very sensitively, which is typically not the case. Usually people don't get adoption. In sum, this is a great book--everything you could want--very relaxing, fun escapism--while at the same time being emotionally real and thought-provoking. What fun!

Some books speak of the human condition and expand our understanding of it. Some books tell great stories, full of adventure and discovery. Some books take genre conventions, shuffle them around, stand them on end and in doing so totally revitalize the genre they're deconstructing. Some books are by turns heart-stopping in their emotional purity and hilarious in their lighter moments.

RAISING STONY MAYHALL is all of these things.

I am an author, and Daryl Gregory's books are so good, so resounding, so frickin' complete, they make me question what the hell I'm doing publishing. That I need to go back to the woodshed and hone my craft.

Like PANDEMONIUM before it, STONY is the best book I've read all year.

It's that simple.

I went into "Stony" very, very skeptically: the zombie genre is becoming somewhat of a dead horse that has been beaten to a bloody pulp, in my opinion. It actually sat on my shelf for months before I picked it up as a last resort "oh well, this will have to do until I get a new one" book. Am I ever glad that I was bored that day and made the decision to crack it open.

Raising Stony Mayhall is by far the best book I read in 2011, and the more I reflect on it, I think it is slowly eeking it's way into my top ten novels of all time, if not top five. Yes, there are zombies involved, but at its heart "Stony" is a story of life. It covers everything from coming of age to religion to politics to family without being over-bearing or preachy on a single one. It's a sprawling story of one person's life, told in a voice so fresh and so alive, so utterly HUMAN, that you will forget it is a book about the dead.

Simply put, if you do not find yourself staying up late into the night unable to stop turning pages, laughing, and crying, you may be as heartless as the living in Raising Stony Mayhall (stupidly) assume zombies to be. Long live Stony!

Gregory is amazingly adept at taking what could charitably be called an "offbeat" premise and making it not only believable but absorbing. Well worth reading.

I have known Daryl since he was a young child. I love his books. I normally do not read "vampire", "undead" or other creepy books nor do I watch them in movies. I think his writing style is much like a young Steven King. His characters are well developed and a good story line without wondering around to confuse me. I have not read any of his "Comic Books' but am sure they would also be good. Keep up the good work DJ

I'm going to make three outlandish-seeming assertions in this brief review, but I stand wholeheartedly behind each of them:

1. Raising Stony Mayhall does for the zombie mythos what Watchmen did/does for the superhero mythos. I don't make this statement lightly. I teach Watchmen every January in an interim-term course at LaGrange College--along with Art Spiegelman's Maus, Neil Gaiman's Sandman stories, and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis--and the thoroughness with which Daryl Gregory explores this often overblown, often underdeveloped horror trope astonished and delighted me. Stony Mayhall lives and breathes as a human character even if he doesn't exactly "live" and/or "breathe" in any conventional sense.

2. In a just world, Raising Stony Mayhall--the title, by the way, deliberately works on several levels--would establish Gregory as having done for this specialized kind of dark narrative what Bram Stoker once did for literary vampires.

3. And, despite the hyperbolic edge to this third claim, Raising Stony Mayhall qualifies as the War and Peace of undead lit. You need only acquire the book and step into its world to learn how and why.

You'll find no plot summary or paean to the author's style in this review (although, with more time, I'd happily provide both), but instead my heartfelt encouragement to read this novel, because it is in fact an honest-to-God novel. Also, if you then regard it as highly as I do, tell others about it. Thank you.

In 1968, a zombie plague exploded with the victims in a raged fever frenzy biting humans when they could find them. The Feds worked to kill the zombies by burning their bodies and thus preventing a pandemic. Once the fever ended forty-eight hours later the survivors became rational thinking non violent feeling people who formed an underground to help their own kind. Stony Mayhall was found as a baby by Wanda Mayhall, the latter raised him along with her three daughters. He never knew there were others like him as he grew up in isolation on a remote farm. His only friend was Kwang Cho.

One night Stony and Kwang went out but the former is recognized for what he is. The Diggers almost catch Stony, but an underground Zombie leader Delia takes him to a safe house. For years he lived in the underground safe house until a group of zombies prepare to give the Big Bite to the human race. Stony calls the Diggers on them, but is captured too and sent under extraordinary rendition to Deadtown Federal Medical Prison where experiments on zombies occur. He becomes a favorite of the director and the other prisoners as he gives them hope. Stony escapes but knows his life's work has begun to save the zombies from the Government who wants to see them all destroyed.

This zombie thriller contains the twist that the species in many ways is better than many humans are as for instance the first commandment is not to bite a breather. Daryl Gregory has his zombies behave like Frankenstein as misunderstood beasts forced to reside in separate unequal government facilities. The Feds know of the forty-eight hour rule, but prefer keeping that classified as top secret. Readers will relish this zombie portrayal as fans will empathize with Stony and his brethren and adopted human family while hissing at cruel humans who claim security as their rationale.

Harriet Klausner