George A. Romero (1940–2017)

Listened on audio. This is Romero's final zombie opus (and opus it is), he had been writing this in various forms for most of his life and never completed it. The family asked Daniel Kraus (Whalefall) to finish it. Its an epic story of the zombie apocolypse that Romero started, but taken in interesting directions. He focus's initially on how it started, from looking at a medical examiner's office, who see's things kick off, a TV News studio reporting on what's happening, and an aircraft carrier, which is the ultimate closed door horror setting. Then he jumps ahead to see how people are surviving years down the road, where we ultimately find that the bad guys aren't necessarily the zombies. He had a pretty interesting take on the mechanics/inner workings of zombies that I haven't seen done before. He must have taking his writing queues from Stephen King cause this book is a doorstop (27 hours, 650+ pages), it probably could have done with some editing, but, heck, what are you going to do, its George Romero. If you're into horror and zombies, a good read.… (more)

I enjoyed this one, it did not deviate from the movie much at all (too bad poor Barbara's all too brief revenge attack wasn't present in the movie), but its descriptions of the ghouls were much nastier than in the film and you get more from the inside the heads of the characters. There was also more with the posse on the move and the sheriff who is more of an actual character here appearing in the latter third of the story. The first half of the book was very thrilling (a little more than in the movie and gorier), which I enjoyed. The only thing I really did not like here was that there was a strange semi-philosophical ramble as intro before the story gets started in chapter one which was utterly unnecessary and, in my opinion, a major misstep by the author. Likewise, the preface by George A. Romero was, unfortunately, horribly boring. However, I would recommend this one to those who just want a quick, to-the-point, easy-to-read, zombie romp whether they have or have not seen the film (and/or its 1990 remake). Just skip the preface and that weird little bit at the very beginning of the first chapter.… (more)