Review of Two Zombie Novels

[future_guardian]

First of all, the two books are Married With Zombies by Jesse Petersen and Dead City by Joe McKinney.  Each book was in a different genre, but they shared some (good) things in common.  For example, the events leading up to the outbreak/infection that began the zombie-making process was standard and believable, and there were some good zombie/human fight scenes.  However, specific description will show which one came out on top.

Married With Zombies had a lot of potential.  It was getting good early press on romance blog websites as well as on the Orbit (publishing company) Twitter feed.  But can we talk cover for a second?  Okay, one of the downfalls was that one of the main colors used was neon pink.  Never mind that that suggests this is a female-oriented read, it's pink.  Bright, neon pink.  Kind of an eyesore, even if you like the color.  The cover's saving grace was that the background color was silver (personal thing, but I love silver backgrounds) and the cover artist used outlines of people instead of stock photos.  So, in spite of the neon pink, the cover worked quite well.  The story, sadly, did not work as well.

First, the good, because there was some genuine good about this novel. I liked that there wasn't a lot of yammering on about scenery, and the author tended to say "These are my characters, these are the zombies, this is where the characters are trying to get to to escape from the zombies."  In other words, this was an accessible novel and if you're in the mood for a short, easy read, I couldn't recommend the book enough.  This was labeled as a fantasy novel, but it's been called a paranormal romance in multiple places.  Well, there's enough action and blood and gore to keep fans of other speculative fiction genres happy.  On a related note, the novel followed a couple who was close to divorce, so there were very few lovey-dovey scenes and the ones that existed didn't feel so much about love as I-just-killed-a-bunch-of-zombies-and-I-need-to-work-out-some-frustration.  I appreciated that.

Now the bad.  There were a few worldbuilding problems with the novel (such as, how did the oubreak spread so fast?) but I'll overlook them because the worst and most glaring part was the characters.  The novel was told in first person by Sarah.  If the novel had to be written in first person by anyone, Sarah is better than David (Sarah's husband, who wasn't significant at all in the novel, even though he had his starring moments), but she was unlikable as a character and unlikable as a narrator.  I found it believable enough that she would be "GRRRRR, I'm tough!" after the zombie issue, but she seemed so hardcore/closed/nasty to everyone before that point (see an early scene where she gets upset at her husband over CDs when that scene doesn't play an important role later on).  I love the fact that she judges other people for their "flaws" (they're too perfect, they're too ditzy, they're too mean, they're too shady/cultist, they hate me) and never once considers she's not perfect either and has no right to do the judging thing.  David, meanwhile, was just...there.  The only thing he seemed to do was blame himself for all the things he may or may not have done wrong during zombie fight scenes or show how much stronger Sarah was than he was.

In all fairness to the author, this is her first novel (if not ever, at least in this series, but I'm pretty sure it's her first ever).  I'm thinking some of the problems (worldbuilding, anyway) will be hammered out the more she writes.  I just hated her main characters to the point that they ruined a potentially good novel.

Dead City was a much better novel overall.  It was initially released in 2006 and was reprinted in 2010, and based on the story I read, I could see why it went into reprint.  Yes, it was good.  Yes, read it.

So, this was a horror novel.  It read like a horror novel.  It had the standard something-we-can't-explain (explained to the readers, of course), scenes of action, blood and gore, and oh yeah, lots of zombies.  It even had the obligatory author beats readers over the head with a lesson on human nature.  Ignore pages 264-268 if you don't like this kind of thing.  You won't miss much.  In spite of having a spiel of sorts on human nature, it really was a good read.

The main character was worlds better than the main characters in Married With Zombies.  He was written very human, like someone your might meet in real life.  He had his flaws (biggest one I saw was grudgingly helping a sort-of friend, with no explanation for why he was constantly annoyed with his friend) but he was someone you could cheer for.  I personally found his "I need to find my wife!  I need to find my son!" irritating after a while, not for the reasons people may think.  It's just, you'd think, if he had a choice between fighting zombies to swinging by the house and picking his family up, he'd choose his family.  But until the end of the book, he always chose fighting zombies.  In context it sounds a lot less horrific, because this is a zombie novel and even if he hurried to meet his family at the house, he'd still encounter zombies on his way.  One good thing about being separated from his family was, he'd think of them and that offered him the motivation to keep going.  Characters need motivation, and I found this character's believable.

In short, Dead City was the winner.  Married With Zombies is light (book size), easy reading, which can be wonderful when you don't want a lot to reflect over, but Dead City had better characters and was much easier to overlook the issues.  All that being said, I recommend reading them both for yourself because, well, maybe you'll see something I didn't.