Roses of Blood on Barbwire Vines (Paperback)

~ (Author), Z.A. Recht (Introduction)
Key Phrases: oaken stake, more zombies, more tentacles, Colonel Bain, General Frost, City of Roses (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

A marvelous dark fantasy---filled with ruthless vampires, flesh-eating zombies, and enough action to leave you breathless. Intense, gruesome, funny, and fast-paced---it has all the ingredients needed to satisfy even the most jaded fan of horror fiction. -- Jonathan Maberry, Author of "Ghost Road Blues"

Product Description

Zombies have devoured mankind. And the few survivors would be better off dead because a clan of vampires, bloodthirsty and vicious, have captured the remnants of humanity for livestock.

In an apartment building barricaded with wrecked cars, concrete rubble, and snarls of barbwire, the vampires breed lobotomized amputees. Ann, the secret blood slave of the maternity doctor, has evaded this fate, yet her sister Ellie has not. Though she longs to escape, Ann cannot abandon her sibling and unborn niece. But she may have to if she wants to survive.

The living dead have found a weak spot in the barricade and are quickly invading the building. Shade, the vampire monarch, defends her kingdom, while Frost, Shade's general, plans to migrate to an island where they can breed and hunt humans. In their path stands a legion of corpses, just now evolving into something far more lethal, something with tentacles---and that's just the beginning.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Permuted Press (June 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0978970713
• ISBN-13: 978-0978970710
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #448,777 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Metaphors and an overused vernacular make for a difficult read, March 20, 2008

By	Kurt (Orlando, FL United States) - See all my reviews

I'm on a zombie book kick right now and want to read what people rate as the best. DL Snell tried to be a literary genius by making each descriptive sentence into some metaphor or simile. I'm an educated person and I can grasp and understand these, but it does require one to think, thus making it a slower read.

Another complaint is that each chapter is about 3-4 pages long. It would seem that instead of trying to link each scene change with some words, he'd rather just end the chapter.

Complaints aside, it is a gruesome tale of vampirism and their quest for survival. I just wish the author would use common language instead of trying to come across as a pompous know-it-all. I was misguided by the rest of the reviews, thinking this would be a great and easy read. I was wrong, sadly.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars 50 pages is enough, September 14, 2008

By	Kenny Waryn "Kenny" (North Arlington, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

I tried. I really did.

I can't remember the last book I stopped reading before finishing it, but this one, I couldn't make past 50 pages. Actually, 48 pages. 8 Chapters.

I tried, but I just can't read it anymore.

First, I hate to give bad reviews, and will only do when a book or movie really deserves it. And this one does.

When I bought the book, I had high hopes. Zombies AND Vampires. What could be better? I love zombie fiction and have read a ton of zombie books over the past few years, some good, some great, some awesome, but this is the first stinker that I've read....or attempted to read.

My complaints are similiar to the other criticisms of this book. One, it's way too over descriptive, to the point I had to re-read a few things because I wasn't sure what the hell the author was talking about. Being descriptive is good, but being overly descriptive in every sentence of every paragraph on every page is not just annoying, but very distracting. Instead of adding to the story, it takes away, and makes it a hard read.

Second, instead of a horror story, the book comes off as a poor romance novel. There is very little in the way of action or zombies in the first 50 pages, but plenty of overly described sex and masturbation that adds zero to the story. It seems the only reason all the sex was in the book is it must've got the author all hot and bothered writing it.

Unfortunately, it doesn't have the same effect on the reader.

And, 50 pages in, all I know that's going on is one vampire wants to go someplace else, and some woman kinda would like to escape, but doesn't want to leave her pregnant sister. Not much of a story to keep you hooked, but a whole lot of meaningless filler.

I probably won't try reading this book again, since I won't have that 'I wonder how it ended' question lingering, since there really wasn't much of a plot in the first 8 chapters.

Maybe the book gets better, and I'm missing out. Somehow I doubt it though.

14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When Culture Becomes an Artifact , August 15, 2007

By	TastyBabySyndrome "T(to the)B(to the)S" ("Daddy Dagon's Daycare" - Proud Sponsor of the Little Tendril Baseball Team, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Amazon Verified Purchase

Many forms of literature have established that a world thick with the undead would be bad place for the living. Staying alive is the biggest problem that is faced, but many other types of conflict also litter the playing field. Thes as well as other forms of media have also established that a world thick with vampires might not be the best playground to play kick the can in, to perhaps go out in the dark in, to place much hope when looking to the sky and begging for wishes in, or to really do much more than to abandon all hope within.
And a world rich with both of these things showing themselves steadily; that's not exactly a place where people would want to be.
In Roses of Blood on Barbwire that's exactly what you find yourself looking at; humanity has found itself in the midst of a plague of undeath and, caught between the crosshairs of slow-witted corpses and the type that create less bumps in the night and aren't something you can outsmart with barricades and using chickenwire, they find themselves a depleting commodity. This leads to plans of defending a island of bipedal food because a vampire has got to eat, to breeding the humans back and more, and then there's something far worse than that.
Humanity needs a hug.

When I first picked up this book, I knew nothing about it save the tagline that melded "zombies, vampires, and Lovecraftian" into the same happy camp and that brought a tear to my eye in the porcess. Being a fan of the first two and a lover of the mythos, I really wanted a connection and I really wanted a book that gave me what those few words could perhaps hand me.
And it delivered; o did it ever, and big time.

Before I read the book, I knew the author's name because of something he had written as an introduction. After I read the first four (4) pages, the introduction he did on his own terms with his own characterizing voice, I found myself walking through a finely-tuned sonata of wording that totally redefined the image I had of Snell. Not only did Snell understand how to pace his book so it would give us characters and keep us on our toes, but he also understood that he had a grand idea in the palm of his hand and he scripted that plight living within the plight beautifully. This meant you had to understand the humans involved, the vampires involved, the way the zombies fit in, and everything else that mingled in the entrails existing from cover to cover.
And, at the end of the read, I thought that D.L. Snell was a name worthy of the things he promised.

If you worry because you (1) don't know the author, (2) think horror is a tired genre, (3) fear the word Lovecraftian because it gets mistreated too much, (4) don't know the quality of the publisher, YOU WILL BE PLEASED. The story comes across smoothly, the read has layers within the layers so you can read it more than once, and the author - I just can't give out enough praise.

I HIGHLY recommend this book and am happy, for once, about an impulse buy that still has me thinking on all the "what ifs" the idea spawns. It was really worth the buy.