Raising Stony Mayhall, by Daryl Gregory
Blurb:
In 1968, after the first zombie outbreak, Wanda Mayhall and her three young daughters discover the body of a teenage mother during a snowstorm. Wrapped in the woman's arms is a baby, stone-cold, not breathing, and without a pulse. But then his eyes open and look up at Wanda - and he begins to move.
The family hides the child - whom they name Stony - rather than turn him over to authorities that would destroy him. Against all scientific reason, the undead boy begins to grow. For years his adoptive mother and sisters manage to keep his existence a secret - until one terrifying night when Stony is forced to run and he learns that he is not the only living dead boy left in the world.
Read the first chapter: here.
Review:
Daryl Gregory is the kind of guy who writes a possessed Philip K. Dick into one of his books as a supporting character. He seems fascinated by human alterations - his first book was about people possessed by archetypes, his second was about transformation into mutants in a small Southern town (sort of), and his third novel is about people who turn into zombies. It provides a thesis to unify slow zombie and fast zombie fans, and examines the physics and metaphysics of being the living dead.
When people are first infected and turned, they go through a few days of fever and delirium while they lust for human flesh, so they stagger around and make weird sounds. After the fever breaks, they regain their minds, although sometimes with amnesia or personality alterations. At this point they no longer have homicidal impulses if they don't want to. So Stony, who studied his sister's medical texts and ran experiments to see why his body didn't break down, joins the L.D. (Living Dead) underground and meets all types of dead people while he is drawn slowly into L.D. politics.
Chris Roberson said, 'so good that I grieved when I got to the last page, because I wanted it to just go on and on.' It really is. Gregory's writing gets better with each book, and the plot never slows down or becomes predictable (except in that zombie trope way the fans all love).
Bechdel test: fail, since most of the book is third person limited (third person, but Stony's POV).
Johnson test: fail, again partially due to the POV.
Overall rating: 5 overalls out of 5