Book 29: Monster Island
Book 29:Monster Island
Writer: David Wellington
Genre: Horror
Number of pages: 288
Read This Year: 8140
My rating of the book, F- [worst] to A [best]: A-
Short Description/Summary of the Book: From Amazon.com
This is a zombie novel--a fantastic zombie novel. Most of the world has fallen to the undead, with pockets of survivors clinging to a precarious existence. At the behest of the leader of the Free Women's Republic of Somaliland, a shipload of those makes the ludicrous trip from Africa to New York in a desperate quest for medicine. New York is a wasteland, and everything depends on a small, incredibly dedicated band of teenage girls, armed to the teeth, and native guide Dekalb, formerly a UN arms inspector. Also, in NYC there is Gary, a zombie who, completely unexpectedly, retains live human mental faculties. The questers get ringside seats for some of the apocalypse's finest moments, and no matter how prepared they thought they were, something worse awaits in the depths of New York. When zombies have already overrun everything, that's saying something. There are many layers to this zombie apocalypse, and this book just gets things rolling. Stay tuned.
My Thoughts: I read a lot of books, including a great number of “volume one”s - the first in a trilogy, the first in a series and so forth. In many of those cases, I never make it to volume two. In many of the others, I make a note to pick up the second volume “sooner or later.” This is one of those rare cases where I want to rush right out and get the next book, because I’m dying to see what happens next.
At first blush, this seems to be a typical zombie novel. A plague of the undead has overrun the Earth and there seems to be no hope, let alone a cure. Dekalb, a former UN weapons inspector, agrees to go to New York to try to find a supply of HIV drugs for a Somalian warrior woman, in exchange for the safety of his daughter. What Dekalb doesn’t count on is Gary, a former doctor who theorizes that the reason the Undead are mindless beasts is because their brains starve from lack of oxygen between the time they die and the time they rise - and he thinks he’s found a way to beat it. While Dekalb’s mission remainds somewhat single-minded, Gary finds himself growing more and more horrific and bloodthirsty as the book progresses, with his goals changing as he learns more about the Undead and the world he has ushered himself into.
David Wellington has found a wonderful new twist on the zombie novel. It’s not just “man against the walking dead” like so many of the stories are - instead he digs deeper to reveal an underlying evil that makes the zombie plague seem innocent by comparison. It feels like a Stephen King sort of twist, only with a much more solid ending, even for the first volume of a trilogy. While the book as a whole is very energetic and exciting, it’s the ending that makes me want to run out for book two, Monster Nation. I’ve got to see just where Wellington plans on taking this.