Looking for Recs: Mmm… Brains…
“Hello, friend,” said the Crazy Devil Child.
I’m looking for zombie book recommendations, but wait, before we start. Let’s look at my history with zombie related anything.
I’m not a fan of zombies. It’s no secret. And it’s not just the “undead” variety. I don’t like things that are zombie-like either because of a virus or chemicals in the water or because a reaper invasion turned them into a husk but I can never hate Bioware or what-the-hell-ever. I can barely be bothered with them in any type of media. Games? No. Movies? No. Television? No. Books? Hell no. Especially not in my books.
Joseph Oda. Credit The Evil Within Wiki
Now, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t watch and like some zombie media. I’m a fan of The Walking Dead television show (I don’t much care for the comics…). I don’t normally do zombie games. I do play Left 4 Dead 2 and Dead Island, but that’s only because the people I play with are hilarious. Fun co-op friends always make a game fun to play, especially when we’re laughing at how terribly wrong everything is going because we have one kamikaze in the group. I did recently play and beat The Evil Within, but it was such a joyless play through that I don’t even know why I bothered. I hated almost every second of the gameplay, but the story wasn’t too bad, even if I took grave offense to zombies I just killed getting back up if I didn’t burn them or shoot them in the head when I had like 1 match and 2 bullets left. Such bullshit and very fucking rude, but Joseph Oda’s face made it better. But I digress. We’re here to talk about books not my gamer rage problems!
When someone recommends a horror book, my first question is, “Does it have zombies?” When someone recommends something post-apocalyptic, my first question is, “Does it have zombies?” When someone says, “Hey, I read this really great book you might–” I quickly interrupt and ask, “Dammit, does it have zombies?” If the answer is “yes,” then this is my typical response:
Despite this, the zombie fiction that I have read has mostly agreed with me, but I’m certain this is only because I’m picky about the zombie fiction I read. Out of what I have read, which is still a very small amount, I’ve only hated one book, The Forest of Hands and Teeth. I hated that because of the main character. I thought the writing was excellent and the atmosphere terrific, but I also wanted the main character to swallow a chainsaw and we never reconciled. I’ve found that the stories I like are going to be the ones where the zombies are really just the backdrop adding tension or if there’s some interesting angle to the story that makes it unusual.
What got me started on this tangent? Well, I recently listened to a short story from Tim Waggoner’s series Nekropolis called Disarmed and Dangerous, which features a reanimated cop that now does supernatural detective work for a living. He’s self-aware, even though most zombies aren’t in that universe. He’ll even pretend to be a roaming, mindless zombie when he needs to. Living in his own body is an outer body experience. He doesn’t feel pain or pleasure. A body part is always getting lopped off and he can only regard it as a strange feeling to see one of his body parts just waiting there for him to retrieve it after a fight or whatever. I enjoyed this story, and that got me thinking, “There has to be other zombie books out there that I’d actually enjoy.” I guess you could say that I enjoy character and story over splatter, but I’m not against a good splatter story if it really has something to offer.
Here’s my small list of zombie fiction I said I’d try mainly because I want to trust the people who recommended these books, but I’m not certain they really have my best interests at heart. I STILL LOVE YOU GUYS! 😀
1. My Life as a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland
2. Narrator Battle: Zombie Edition by Nicholas Ryan ft. narrators R.C. Bray and Sean Runnette
3. I, Zombie by Hugh Howey
I should mention I have read Warm Bodies and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and I do have the rest of The Walking Dead comics and The Rise of the Governor novels on my TBR pile. I’ve also added Waggoner’s series to my pile, as well. I am trying to expand my zombie horizons. Give me a few recommendations. I’m open. It can be a comic, a book, or hey, if you think there is a zombie movie or game that I need to check out because it’s your favorite, let me know… unless it’s The Last of Us. That game annoyed me way too much to finish it.
The BiblioSanctum 
Umm the first thing that comes to mind is The Girl With All the Gifts. Not a traditional zombie story but one of my very favorite books for many reasons.
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None traditional zombie stories are high on my list of things I’m looking for. I think the traditional is what turns me off from the genre. I do have the audiobook for that one and will definitely add it to my list.
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Well, Stephen King’s Cell isn’t a traditional zombie story in the sense of how the virus is spread… but I would NOT recommend it. That’s actually the only zombie novel I’ve ever read. Like you, I’m not interested and not got into that whole zombie craze.
However, you may want to look up ZONE ONE by Colson Whitehead. It is a post-apolytpic zombie setting, but from what I’ve heard – I haven’t read it – I believe that the zombies are used as more of a backdrop, and the story actually focuses on a group of people and their interactions with each other.
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Thank you for the recommendation! I’ll look the Colson one. I’m going to compile a shelf and start pulling books from it. October might turn into a zombiefest.
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Another vote from me for The Girl with All the Gifts. But you already know I’m jumping up and down for you to read that 🙂
I also have a zombies shelf you might want to check out: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/4379514-mogsy-mmogc?shelf=zombies
A couple ones that stand out as being unconventional or a bit unique: Peter Clines’ Ex-Heroes (superheroes protecting survivors from the zombie apocalypse) and Fiend (where the only survivors of the zombie apocalypse are junkies – you’ll either like this one or throw it against the wall because of its writing style).
As for games, this is my chance to push The Secret World again for any who might be reading this (I’m like a drug dealer for that game, lol) Very atmospheric, the best written MMO on the market these days BAR NONE (blows even SWTOR out of water) and the first part of the game in New England is ALL ZOMBIES. I still remember that time I crossed a bridge to go into another zone, and it was a scene of a bus crash with all these bodies littering the road. I thought, “Aw, all these poor people…” a second before they all rose to their feet and chased me and pounded me into oblivion.
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I mentioned Ex-Heroes when I talked about 14 in my TTT and how the zombies shelves are what made me kind of go, “I dunno, guys,” even though I like the superhero angle, but I’ll add it back AND check out your shelf. Fiend sounds really interesting. I’ll be adding these suggestions to my list when I can get to Goodreads.
Believe it or not, I have TSW. I even bought it in the last sale from a year or two back on Steam for cheap probably. I keep starting characters, but then, I have no one to play with and lose interest because it feels like the type of game I need to play with someone which is unusual because I don’t mind be a solo-er. I’ve liked what I have encountered of the story. I just never make it very far. I keep saying I need to give it another chance.
Thanks!
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I totally understand. Story-wise, I think TSW is actually quite solo-friendly in that it’s nice being able to explore and watch cutscenes at your own pace, not to mention solve the investigation puzzles on your own and stuff. But gameplay wise, it’s much better with at least one other friend, mostly because of just how unforgiving it is on new players. The game is fun as hell, but there’s a steep learning curve involved and I had a lot of trouble with it until the concept of the skill wheel and building decks finally “clicked”. In those days, having my husband backing me up was invaluable.
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Yeah, that skill wheel is the most intimidating thing I have ever seen in my life. That might also be part of the reason why I keep backing out. I keep thinking that I might be doing something wrong and what if I’m making a bad build. However, I want to really give it a chance. I’m more into more modern day/Sci-Fi MMO type games than fantasy games, and I have been searching desperately for something that makes me want to play it as much as my one favorite MMO CoH. TSW seemed like a good candidate. Champions Online is just okay… :-\ I do enjoy SWTOR, though. I might be able to get my husband into TSW. We went into SWTOR together, so I don’t see why not. LOL.
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I haven’t really read any zombie books but I have watched the show, iZombie (I don’t know whether it’s book-based or not) and it’s the only zombie thing I could handle – there’s not much gore but Liz does eat her brains with Sriracha, so that’s always good. I saw Warm Bodies, too – and liked it – so I’d say iZombie has a similar level of zombie-ness.
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I watched a couple of episodes of iZombie, too, with my husband. That seemed like a cool concept. I think there’s a comic, but I don’t know if the comic came first or the show came first. I still haven’t watched Warm Bodies because it seemed they really changed R quite a bit for the movie. (He’s described as being dressed in business casual, but he doesn’t seem to be that way in the movie. I am being petty. LOL.) But I loved the book. In fact, it’ll be on one of my upcoming TTT of retelling I’ve read. Warm Bodies is a Romeo and Juliet retelling.
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OK, so before I got around to mentioning iZombie, somebody else did…
…but if you liked the first few episodes, WATCH ON! Seriously, I think that series just got better and better as it went on, and brought in more serialised elements alongside the case-of-the-week stuff. Great finale, too.
[I’ll also mention theoretically a webcomic I read years ago. I don’t even remember the name, and it wasn’t all that great – readable, but nothing special. Except for its premise, which was genius: there is a zombie apocalypse, and a small band of survivors try to survive against the odds… with the help of some vampires. The vampires aren’t particularly altruistic (though they’re not all bad), it’s just that humans are their only food source, and they’re getting pissed off that the zombies are killing them all…]
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I actually watched one of the later episodes with my husband the other night, but now I have to go back and watch the ones that I missed. The vampire thing you’ve mentioned reminds me a podcast I recently listened to. I wonder if that could be the same people or just someone inspired by the web comic. I’ll have to check that out because I do like that premise.
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She fed a zombie!!!?? Crazy
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That was a devil child not meant for this world.
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The zombie was hungry. She was just being nice.
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Yes because devil children recognize their own kind. She felt kinship.
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Can’t help you much – zombies have rather passed me by. In fact the only zombie novels I can think of are Discworld – ‘Reaper Man’ in particular has a sentient (but shambling) zombie protagonist, the wizard Windle Poons, while other novels feature such zombies as Reg Shoe (perpetual hapless revolutionary, who spends one day a year in his grave out of solidarity with his deceased brethren and is disappointed they’re not zombies because it seems like a lack of commitment on their part…) and Mr Slant (head of the guild of lawyers, who has been dryly and gravely exploiting loopholes in all sorts of rules for several centuries).
In terms of TV, though, have you been watching ‘iZombie’? It’s a police procedural with a zombie heroine. She’s a high-functioning zombie – these zombies only go into ‘full-on zombie mode’ when they need to survive, or when they haven’t eaten enough brains – who helps solve crimes in Seattle by eating people’s brains and then having flashbacks to their lives.
It’s much better than you’d expect – starts off quirky and silly, actually gets pretty dark and pretty clever by the end (one season so far). It’s written by the people behind ‘Veronica Mars’, and has a lot in common with it, though it’s a fair bit lighter and sillier (though gorier).
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I’m still early on my Discworld reads, but someone mentioned that zombies become part of a later story. I find Pratchett’s humor fun, so I’m sure I’ll like it when I get around to it.
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Oh, and someone should mention one of the most classic of the classics: I am Legend (the book, not the films!)
Technically, it’s about vampires, not zombies, in that they drink blood and can’t come out at night. On the other hand, they’re not that smart and a ravening horde of them have destroyed all of civilisation, so you could say it’s really about zombies dressed like vampires. [Whereas maybe izombie and the like are about vampires dressed as zombies…]
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I’ve read the book. Loved it. The film was entertaining, though, for what I call “The Fred Scene.” That’s still the best thing about the movie. LOL.
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Girl With All the Gifts seems it would be right up your alley.
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Have you read The Girl with all the Gifts? It’s fantastic!
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I just finished My Life as a White Trash Zombie, it was really good. A lighter take on zombies, and Angel was just plain fun to read.
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I think that’s what intrigues me about it. It sounds fun and I can’t resist that.
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I completely understand you. I am not easily grossed out in real life but when I read about maggots and rotting body parts…. A lot of zombie books are just …. too much.
There is Healer by Maria V. Snyder for a light fantasy with zombie without gross descriptions.
I also liked Donners of the Dead by Karina Halle which twists true tale to history.
And of course the classic – I am Legend. That book is a must read.
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I have Snyder’s books on my TBR pile. Had no idea they featured zombies in anyway, so that should definitely be interesting. I hadn’t heard of Donners of the Dead, but I am looking into that now. I am Legend I have read and enjoyed it very much.
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I third the vote for Girl With All the Gifts. A must read. Also I am Legend is, I think, cited as one of those books that started the whole ‘zombie’ nation type craze – it’s a bleak read but necessarily so because you’re going through the character’s emotions and he’s really not having a good time!!
Lynn 😀
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