Customer Reviews

The War of the Worlds Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It's difficult to tell where H.G. Wells ends and Eric S. Brown begins in this book, seamless writing and the addition of Eric's wonderful style make this book a fantastic read! I highly reccomend it to any fan of either genre!

I love sci-fi, and enjoy things with zombies on occasion. This was a really good read, and I am glad that you seen a lot of the writing of H.G. Wells stay intact with the interaction of the zombies. If your a fan of War of the Worlds either in movies or the original, this is a must read. More because it adds another suspenseful turn to an already suspenseful book.

Invaders from the Red Planet come to earth, causing zombies to swarm the planet, thus threatening all of mankind instead of just Great Britain.

***
The possibility of life on other planets has been written about in many genres, especially science fiction. Author Eric S. Brown's fascination with zombies has led him to modify H.G. Wells classic, "War of the Worlds". While the Mars invaders in that original novel were limited to Great Britain, here zombies are created worldwide, as particles falling off the Martian spaceships spread throughout earth's atmosphere.

Brown's version can be liken to his purchase of a frosted cake from a bakery to which he added a few sprinkles for decoration whereupon he takes credit for creating the entire confection. To say that the addition of zombies to this timeless tale is superficial is an understatement.

Unlike Well's original, this version needs additional editing. There are some sentences with either a misspelled or missing word. For example on page 87, "It was my unfortunate luck that a dead man already killed the ditch home." There are also a few minor formatting issues, although they do not affect the flow of the story.

Readers interested in other War of the Worlds adaptations can read George H. Smith's, "The Second War of the Worlds"; Was and Manly Wade Wellman's "Sherlock Holmes' War of the Worlds"; J.M. Dillard's "War of the World's: The Resurrection"; Max Allan Collin's "War of the Worlds Murder"; Tony Wright's "War of the Worlds: Aftermath"; Douglas Niles' "War of the Worlds: New Millennium"; Gabriel Mesta's "The Martian Wars"; or, "War of the Worlds: Global Dispatch" edited by Kevin J. Anderson.

Readers interested in other zombie tales can read any one of Eric E. Brown's numerous books on zombies or "World War Z" and "The Zombie Survival Guide" by Max Brooks.

The War of the Worlds Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies is truly horrifying. From the Martians with their Heat-Ray, the artillerymen, the common people and the undead, there is no lack of suspense. I, for one, will never again take for granted that my planet, Earth, is safe from the unknown. After reading this book, I have lots to think about. That is what I like in a book.

Eric Brown has, yet again, written a remarkably entertaining book. He is truly a talented author of the unknown, undead, and unthinkable!

Speaking as a creator, I was a little squemish with the idea of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and deep down I knew if remotely successful, there would be more of its type. My assumption was correct, but my angst toward it was not. As a fan of Eric Brown, I took the plunge and I was certainly entertained. It's been at least a decade since the last time I cracked open my hardcover copy of War of the Worlds and in reading this incarnation I was taken back to a younger me. Eric has done a commendable job of intigrating Wells' voice with his own.

The reviewer before me couldn't be more wrong in his/her analysis of this book. Yes, the typo pointed out is an obvious error, but what book doesn't have several of those? Outside of that, I think the reviewer is thrown off by the British and Old World English variants. This is the original text with zombies spliced in. The breaks in paragraphs mentioned are to display newspaper headlines and emphasize them, a gimmick maybe, but certainly not an editing error. Coscom Entertainment has done a fantastic job with this, and all of its recent releases.

If you've never read this classic, then you should certainly do so right here. It is the classic with a little something extra, and if you have, perhaps it's time to revisit it with a little extra carnage and rekindle that magic.

Mars is dying, but the inhabitants see earth as their next home. Knowing they are a thousand rimes smarter and even more advanced than humans, they expect no problems conquering the third planet.

He sees an odd green light pass near his residence. He goes to look and finds a spacecraft. The inhabitants are mostly brains with tentacles using mechanical bodies for locomotion. More space ships follow as the invasion of earth has begun.

When the Martians kill a human, the latter do not stay dead; instead they return as mindless carnivores seeking live human meat. The Martians did not expect this second order effect and their scientists struggle to find a way to kill the rising reanimated dead. The observer watches much of the invasion and the zombie counter insurgency. Just when it seems the angry red planet expatriates conquered earth, bacteria attacks the Martians.

Eric S. Brown adds a relatively smooth major "Blood, Guts and Zombies" subplot to the original War of the Worlds. Though purists will ask why the Z treatment to this classic, the story line is lighthearted fun; unless you happen to be trapped between zombie and Martian fevers. The blending works for an enjoyable science fiction horror thriller though with Austen, Twain, and Lincoln fighting zombies in a sub-genre losing its freshness, who is next, Darth Vader?

Harriet Klausner

Blurb: The classic science fiction tale that will eat your brains!
Never before in the history of warfare had destruction been so indiscriminate and so universal.
Panic descends upon planet Earth once more as H.G. Wells's terrifying cosmic invaders blaze a path of fiery destruction across Victorian England, leaving thousands of undead in their wake. Our adventurous narrator must survive the apocalyptic alien threat while fighting off raging, bloodthirsty zombies. Who will triumph when man, Martian, and flesh-eating monster meet? Packed with fearsome supernatural creatures at every turn, Wells's original masterpiece is scarier, gorier, and more suspenseful than ever!

What Stephanie Thought: I haven't read the original The War of the Worlds, so when I picked up The War of the Worlds, Plus Blood, Guts, and Zombies, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. Maybe if I had read the rudimentary novel, I could have enjoyed it more, but not having done so, I found much of this book disappointing.
I normally am a fan of science fiction because of the element of the gory and of the unknown. I was excited to read this because I knew it would involve zombies, but the zombies played very minute roles in the plot.
I'm not sure why this had to be drawn out to 306 pages, but the best way I can explain what happens is that a mysterious cylinder carrying Martians appears, containing a Heat-Ray gun that zaps dead people into zombies. A few days later, another cylinder appears, containing more Martians, and another gun. Then a THIRD cylinder appears...and it's pretty much self-explanatory from there. Aside from the three cylinder appearances, nothing actually happened within the book, making it really hard to finish. In terms of style, it wasn't difficult to get through, which was pleasant because usually classics take a little more analyzing than usual. The quality of the writing however, was very bland and unmoving. There's this one scene with the zombies that attempts to be extremely bloodletting: "Their brains must have cooked inside their skulls like eggs frying in a pan." Okay, "eggs frying in a pan"? Real original. Real horrific. Nothing particularly motivated me to keep reading. It took me a while to finish the whole novel, and though it was a pretty facile read, in the end, I felt like I didn't get anything out of it.
The War of the Worlds, Plus Blood, Guts, and Zombies wasn't the worst I've read, but it definitely isn't something I'd be interested in reading again. The monotonous way the author writes seems to drone on and on, and the action never presents itself as suspenseful or the least bit amusing, even.


Stephanie Loves: "I crouched at the foot of the staircase with my back to the wall, shivering violently. Then I heard the screams from outside, down the road. The voices I heard belonged to the living and now the dead had found them. I shuddered and prayed for their souls."

Where Stephanie Got It: Paranormal Haven for review.

Radical Rating: 5 hearts- Satisfying for a first read, but I'm not going back.

H.G. Wells was the master of riviting sci-fi advendures. Eric S. Brown is the master of the zombie genre. Put them together and what do you get? A freakin' fantastic novel full of your fondest memories of H.G. Wells and nigtmares courtesy of Eric S. Brown. This updated "War of the Worlds" reads like Eric got in his time machine and traveled back to work directly with H.G. Wells. It flows so well you won't know where Wells stops and Eric begins. This my dear reader is a MUST READ!!

Martians and Humans and Zombies .... OH MY!!

I couldn't have been happier with this book. The themes that HG Wells explores in the original text go hand-in-hand with the zombies. Eric S. Brown adopts Wells' style flawlessly, making a classic piece of literature even better.

This is the second book I have read recently that uses the template of a classic novel and layers over that the invasion of the undead. The first: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, while entertaining based on the novelty of a comedy of manners having brain eating zombies in it, didn't flow quite as well as this re-envisioning of The War of the Worlds.

Much like in the other book, the author here has let the original storyline remain in place, perhaps retaining upwards of 85% of the orginal text, while adding the additional concept of zombies being the result of the creatures that travel from Mars from earth and the residue found on their spaceships. The narrator does conjecture on this point (perhaps they passed through a field of asteroids,etc) but since this story retains its orginal ending, for the most part, we can assume that the martians did not intentionally bring this plague upon mankind, as they have no experience with bacteria on their own planet.

I have always enjoyed War of the Worlds, including the movies that have been derived from it. Eric Brown does a solid job here adding an element that pretty much makes sense. The irony is that both the undead and the Martians have need of humans-for their flesh and for their blood, which makes them both horrifying, although it is made clear that the most pertinent fear of all in this story is of the undead, who are vast in number and without intelligence. It is interesting to compare and contrast the difference between the concept of being devoured alive vs. being sucked dry like a giant bloodshake and which of these two methods would be worse.

While I would begin to grow weary of a great many full length re-writes of classics with zombies or other creatures of horrible legend if it became the fashion to do, I felt that P&P was an interesting novelty and WotW was a natural for a remake with the rotting fellows. Eric Brown hit the mark on this one and his own written passages smoothly transition with the rest of the novel-while it is clear what writing is his and not of the original just because of the subject matter, he does an excellent job in making the transitions from Wells to his own words seemless and unnoticeable, which is quite a trick given the original novel was written well over a century ago.