Married with Zombies by Jesse Petersen
Title: Married with Zombies (Living with the Dead #1)
Author: Jesse Petersen
Genre: horror/humor
My thoughts: DNF - Needs more gore, less divergence into marital problems. The dialogue is full of 90s self-help catchphrases so cheesy that I'm surprised my book didn't grow a rind of mold. This might have been better if it hadn't taken itself so seriously.
The sequencing details of the plot seems very off, and this grated on me. At one point, Sarah bitches at Dave for not gasing up the car the day before, but the day before was the opening scene of the novel, with the morning visit to the therapist and the dawning of the zombie awareness and, even assuming the author had instead intended to mean two days before, Sarah herself had been driving the car in the opening scene. She didn't notice the tank hadn't been filled up then?† That runs counter to everything we know about that character. And the transition time for zombifying is variable solely by the importance to the scene, rendering completely irreverent the stated 10-15 minute range.
The killscene for me fell on p. 143 (ISBN 0316102865):
"You ran out on Lisa for a lot less!"
Dave scowled and his tone was a warning when he said, "Sarah-"
But I wasn't done yet. Not by a long shot. "Also, it's a huge place, doesn't the sign say over a hundred rooms? That means one hundred areas we can't check. Shall I go on?"
Dave shook his head. "I know all that. But Sarah, finding that girl in Seattle made me think about the other people who might be out there like her. And not all of them are going to be too scared to run for it. If we had just a couple more people helping us to shoot and to drive, we might have a better chance at survival."
I shook my head. "You're right, there may be more people there, but-"
"Fuck, Sarah!" he said. "Do you have to argue about every fucking thing?"
"I don't-"
"Yes, you do." He faced me. "For six months you've been telling me every single thing and every way I've fucked up. And I've let you."
I tossed the book aside at that point. I'm going to track down and read Mira Grant's Feed instead.
† Logically, the gas issue would make sense if Sarah had been driving one car on Day One of the zombies and Dave had been driving a second car with low gas on Day Two, but I don't remember them having a second car. And with Dave unemployed and all the money troubles they'd complained about having, owning just one car seems reasonable. IDK. I'm not getting this book back out of the library to fact-check this.
Linked to bookshare: http://community.livejournal.com/bookshare/1817628.html
Note: Public entry.
Author: Jesse Petersen
Genre: horror/humor
My thoughts: DNF - Needs more gore, less divergence into marital problems. The dialogue is full of 90s self-help catchphrases so cheesy that I'm surprised my book didn't grow a rind of mold. This might have been better if it hadn't taken itself so seriously.
The sequencing details of the plot seems very off, and this grated on me. At one point, Sarah bitches at Dave for not gasing up the car the day before, but the day before was the opening scene of the novel, with the morning visit to the therapist and the dawning of the zombie awareness and, even assuming the author had instead intended to mean two days before, Sarah herself had been driving the car in the opening scene. She didn't notice the tank hadn't been filled up then?† That runs counter to everything we know about that character. And the transition time for zombifying is variable solely by the importance to the scene, rendering completely irreverent the stated 10-15 minute range.
The killscene for me fell on p. 143 (ISBN 0316102865):
"You ran out on Lisa for a lot less!"
Dave scowled and his tone was a warning when he said, "Sarah-"
But I wasn't done yet. Not by a long shot. "Also, it's a huge place, doesn't the sign say over a hundred rooms? That means one hundred areas we can't check. Shall I go on?"
Dave shook his head. "I know all that. But Sarah, finding that girl in Seattle made me think about the other people who might be out there like her. And not all of them are going to be too scared to run for it. If we had just a couple more people helping us to shoot and to drive, we might have a better chance at survival."
I shook my head. "You're right, there may be more people there, but-"
"Fuck, Sarah!" he said. "Do you have to argue about every fucking thing?"
"I don't-"
"Yes, you do." He faced me. "For six months you've been telling me every single thing and every way I've fucked up. And I've let you."
I tossed the book aside at that point. I'm going to track down and read Mira Grant's Feed instead.
† Logically, the gas issue would make sense if Sarah had been driving one car on Day One of the zombies and Dave had been driving a second car with low gas on Day Two, but I don't remember them having a second car. And with Dave unemployed and all the money troubles they'd complained about having, owning just one car seems reasonable. IDK. I'm not getting this book back out of the library to fact-check this.
Linked to bookshare: http://community.livejournal.com/bookshare/1817628.html
Note: Public entry.