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busyenjoyinglife's review
5.0
Surprisingly amazing.
I was expecting a collection of zombie stories. You know, people die, people come back, people fight the people that came back. That's how it goes.
What I wasn't expecting was to spend days wondering about my own humanity, my own life choices. I wasn't expecting to be so completely enthralled with stories that I couldn't read on to the next one. Because first and foremost, they must be digested.
I was expecting a collection of zombie stories. You know, people die, people come back, people fight the people that came back. That's how it goes.
What I wasn't expecting was to spend days wondering about my own humanity, my own life choices. I wasn't expecting to be so completely enthralled with stories that I couldn't read on to the next one. Because first and foremost, they must be digested.
roseayyy_reads's review
3.0
I don’t know why I bother to continue reading anthologies, as they’re never as good as I expect lol There were some pretty good stories in it, but also some major duds. One of the better anthologies I’ve read though.
annie76's review
3.0
Some of the stories here are great and a departure from the "typical", played out zombie story. Definitely worth a read if you like zombie lit.
vita_zeta's review
5.0
I have tried to read several short story collections. This is the first one I've finished, and read front to back. This book goes far beyond just zombies, with stories that are exciting, disturbing, moving, funny, thought-provoking, and even kind of sexy. I've always had faith that the horror genre had so much more to say than people give it credit for, and this book is a perfect example.
acknud's review
5.0
Excellent collection of things zombie. There should be a zombie story here to fit anyone.
Outstanding were works by Brite, Schow and Lansdale but the entire book is impressive with no real duds.
Outstanding were works by Brite, Schow and Lansdale but the entire book is impressive with no real duds.
alexctelander's review
4.0
THE LIVING DEAD EDITED BY JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS: After the success of John Joseph Adams’ last anthology Wastelands: Stores of the Apocalypse, he returns with a new fantastic collection, The Living Dead, with stories from the greatest horror fiction writers in publication: Stephen King, Clive Barker, Laurel K. Hamilton, Neil Gaiman, Dan Simmons, and many others. It is a fascinating collection for is proves to the reader that no zombie story is the same, and what amazing settings and situations authors can come up that involve zombies.
In the first story, from Dan Simmons, “This Year’s Class Picture,” Ms. Geiss, a former high school teacher, has barricaded herself in her old high school. A barbed wire fence and wall surround the school, along with a moat filled with gasoline. Geiss spends her days with her class, a class of zombie children. After hitting them with a tranquilizer, she chained them to their chairs and each day shows them pictures of humanity, the beauty of the world, and the greatness of the human race, trying to make a connection, trying to get a reaction. But each day she is greeted by the dead stares in their faces, with their eyes hungry for human flesh.
In Neil Gaiman’s “Bitter Grounds,” the narrator has had enough with his life and just up and leaves one day. Meeting an anthropology professor presenting a paper on zombies in New Orleans, he steals the man’s identity, and never expecting to go through with it, finds himself in New Orleans being the professor. At night in the streets of the old city, he meets some people that later he considers may not be human. He presents the paper as the professor, semi-believing in its intention, especially after his experiences of the night before.
In “The Dead Kid” from Darrell Schweitzer, David is a young boy who wants to hang out with the big kids who are always bullying him; he wants to be like them so they’ll stop bullying him. So one day they show him “the dead kid”: a very young child that is being kept trapped in a box in a cave in the forest. It is very pale, twin empty sockets where its eyes should be, and spends its days slowly writhing, trying to get free of its prison.
The Living Dead is a sobering read in that it primarily reveals to the readers the horrors zombies are capable of, but also presents the dark and evil side of humanity and what it is capable of when pitted against these walking corpses. The idea of the zombie forces one to face the reality of death and how in this way it may be cheated, but when the cost is a term that has become synonymous with something that is dead but alive, incredibly stupid, and hungers for flesh; it makes one yearn all the more for an undisturbed grave.
For more book reviews and exclusive author interviews, go to BookBanter.
In the first story, from Dan Simmons, “This Year’s Class Picture,” Ms. Geiss, a former high school teacher, has barricaded herself in her old high school. A barbed wire fence and wall surround the school, along with a moat filled with gasoline. Geiss spends her days with her class, a class of zombie children. After hitting them with a tranquilizer, she chained them to their chairs and each day shows them pictures of humanity, the beauty of the world, and the greatness of the human race, trying to make a connection, trying to get a reaction. But each day she is greeted by the dead stares in their faces, with their eyes hungry for human flesh.
In Neil Gaiman’s “Bitter Grounds,” the narrator has had enough with his life and just up and leaves one day. Meeting an anthropology professor presenting a paper on zombies in New Orleans, he steals the man’s identity, and never expecting to go through with it, finds himself in New Orleans being the professor. At night in the streets of the old city, he meets some people that later he considers may not be human. He presents the paper as the professor, semi-believing in its intention, especially after his experiences of the night before.
In “The Dead Kid” from Darrell Schweitzer, David is a young boy who wants to hang out with the big kids who are always bullying him; he wants to be like them so they’ll stop bullying him. So one day they show him “the dead kid”: a very young child that is being kept trapped in a box in a cave in the forest. It is very pale, twin empty sockets where its eyes should be, and spends its days slowly writhing, trying to get free of its prison.
The Living Dead is a sobering read in that it primarily reveals to the readers the horrors zombies are capable of, but also presents the dark and evil side of humanity and what it is capable of when pitted against these walking corpses. The idea of the zombie forces one to face the reality of death and how in this way it may be cheated, but when the cost is a term that has become synonymous with something that is dead but alive, incredibly stupid, and hungers for flesh; it makes one yearn all the more for an undisturbed grave.
For more book reviews and exclusive author interviews, go to BookBanter.
sparkleboymatty's review
3.0
It's hard to find an anthology that I really love. There are always going to be really good stories in it and really bad ones. In zombie books I'm a bigger fan of the scary zombies than the futuristic zombies that still take part in society. There were a few good scary stories and a few odd ones that I couldn't wrap my head around. For the most part, a good book. I probably would have skipped some of the stories but I wanted to finish the whole book to count towards my yearly total.
sjlee's review
4.0
As I've written on previous reviews, this is an anthology so the quality is dependent a great deal upon your enjoyment of the constituent parts.
In general I found most of these stories did something interesting. They were well-written, stories I've never seen before, and tackled novel ideas. One shortcoming of the anthology was that most of the zombie stories weren't what I considered traditional zombies. A lot of these stories had zombies who spoke, or had feelings. Those are not what I would consider a zombie story, but many of them did something worthwhile and so I can overlook not adhering to my strict definitions.
A few stories were standouts to me. They include: "This Year's Class Picture", "The Third Dead Body", "Meathouse Man", "The Skull-Faced Boy", and "Followed". Zombies are useful tools for social commentary and many of the authors pulled off something here worth checking out. I also enjoyed that the anthology didn't dive too deeply into the horror genre. A previous zombie anthology was, frankly, gross and I found it off-putting. I think these stories combine drama, comedy, horror, tragedy, and thriller effectively.
Definitely worth checking out for those who like genre and zombies.
In general I found most of these stories did something interesting. They were well-written, stories I've never seen before, and tackled novel ideas. One shortcoming of the anthology was that most of the zombie stories weren't what I considered traditional zombies. A lot of these stories had zombies who spoke, or had feelings. Those are not what I would consider a zombie story, but many of them did something worthwhile and so I can overlook not adhering to my strict definitions.
A few stories were standouts to me. They include: "This Year's Class Picture", "The Third Dead Body", "Meathouse Man", "The Skull-Faced Boy", and "Followed". Zombies are useful tools for social commentary and many of the authors pulled off something here worth checking out. I also enjoyed that the anthology didn't dive too deeply into the horror genre. A previous zombie anthology was, frankly, gross and I found it off-putting. I think these stories combine drama, comedy, horror, tragedy, and thriller effectively.
Definitely worth checking out for those who like genre and zombies.
silverthane's review
3.0
Very enjoyable book overall, the book basically contains a large collection of short stories about zombies. The only reason the book got 4 stars instead of 5 is that not all of the stories directly involve zombies, some are not even in the same ballpark as a zombie story, just the word 'zombie' crops up at some point so they decided to include it...I think they just found there aren't enough short stories about zombies