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booknooknoggin's review
3.0
You cannot do half stars, but this is a 3.5 star book. It is much better than the last collection of zombie short stories I read. It had it's ups and downs. Some stories were good and some were just really bad. Although most of the stories claimed by the editor to be Romero type zombies....this was far from the truth. Not the average zombies were featured in this collection. I rather enjoyed one story where the zombies were looked on almost as karma coming back to life.
montyskid's review against another edition
4.0
I kinda hated it but it was a good premise and story telling. A good gut punch.
veganemelda's review against another edition
I kinda got bored after so many back-to-back weird sex ones. Better editing next time? Some of these stories were amazing!
xterminal's review against another edition
4.0
John Joseph Adams (ed.), The Living Dead (Night Shade Books, 2009)
I know I'm in the minority when I say this, and I know every voice from the peanut gallry will pipe up with exceptions, but as far as I'm concerned, it's pretty hard to go wrong with zombies. I don't care if they're slow zombies, fast zombies, rage zombies, Return of the Living Dead-style zombies, Simon-Pegg-in-the-convenience-store zombies, the lot. They're all awesome. And John Joseph Adams went looking for the best and the brightest to collect in The Living Dead. I'm not sure he entirely succeeded, but he hit most of the highlights. Brilliant bits from Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Lisa Morton, Dave Schow, George R. R. Martin, and Joe Lansdale. Stephen King's second-most-infamous story ever (behind “Survivor Type”). The best thing Dale Bailey ever wrote (which was turned into Joe Dante's Homecoming, in the Masters of Horror series), and I say that as someone who thinks everything Dale Bailey writes is sterling. The story for which Dan Simmons justly won a World Fantasy Award (beating out the Poppy Z. Brite story a few hundred pages farther into the tome). And John Langan's “How the Day Runs Down”, original to the book (the only story here that is). Everyone else describes it as “Our Town with zombies”, so I'll go with that, but it doesn't quite give you the entire picture. (And why do I keep thinking that Nina Kiriki Hoffman writes kidlit? Not judging by this story, she doesn't...)
It's not all that awesome. Kelly Link hits an uncharacteristic pothole here. Laurell K. Hamilton hits a not-so-uncharacteristic one with the story that eventually developed into the Anita Blake series, but pre-Anita, Hamilton's work wasn't much to write home about. (Did you ever read her Ravenloft novel? No, and there's a reason for that.) I;m never quite sure whether I'm going to love or hate any Harlan Ellison story I pick up. I'm still not sure on this one. Doug Winter's “Less than Zombie”, so pointedly amusing when it came out in the late eighties, now feels dated (and when's the last time anyone actually read Less than Zero?). Etc.
A lot of reviewers got on Adams for pushing the boundaries of the zombie genre in his selections for this volume, and if you're looking for a bunch of stories that stick close to the Romero canon, this is not the book for you. On the other hand, if you are fascinated by possibilities, check it out. *** ½
I know I'm in the minority when I say this, and I know every voice from the peanut gallry will pipe up with exceptions, but as far as I'm concerned, it's pretty hard to go wrong with zombies. I don't care if they're slow zombies, fast zombies, rage zombies, Return of the Living Dead-style zombies, Simon-Pegg-in-the-convenience-store zombies, the lot. They're all awesome. And John Joseph Adams went looking for the best and the brightest to collect in The Living Dead. I'm not sure he entirely succeeded, but he hit most of the highlights. Brilliant bits from Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Lisa Morton, Dave Schow, George R. R. Martin, and Joe Lansdale. Stephen King's second-most-infamous story ever (behind “Survivor Type”). The best thing Dale Bailey ever wrote (which was turned into Joe Dante's Homecoming, in the Masters of Horror series), and I say that as someone who thinks everything Dale Bailey writes is sterling. The story for which Dan Simmons justly won a World Fantasy Award (beating out the Poppy Z. Brite story a few hundred pages farther into the tome). And John Langan's “How the Day Runs Down”, original to the book (the only story here that is). Everyone else describes it as “Our Town with zombies”, so I'll go with that, but it doesn't quite give you the entire picture. (And why do I keep thinking that Nina Kiriki Hoffman writes kidlit? Not judging by this story, she doesn't...)
It's not all that awesome. Kelly Link hits an uncharacteristic pothole here. Laurell K. Hamilton hits a not-so-uncharacteristic one with the story that eventually developed into the Anita Blake series, but pre-Anita, Hamilton's work wasn't much to write home about. (Did you ever read her Ravenloft novel? No, and there's a reason for that.) I;m never quite sure whether I'm going to love or hate any Harlan Ellison story I pick up. I'm still not sure on this one. Doug Winter's “Less than Zombie”, so pointedly amusing when it came out in the late eighties, now feels dated (and when's the last time anyone actually read Less than Zero?). Etc.
A lot of reviewers got on Adams for pushing the boundaries of the zombie genre in his selections for this volume, and if you're looking for a bunch of stories that stick close to the Romero canon, this is not the book for you. On the other hand, if you are fascinated by possibilities, check it out. *** ½
bhalpin's review against another edition
5.0
Simply the best horror anthology since The Dark Descent. Most anthologies are hit and miss; not this one. It's just incredibly strong story after incredibly strong story. If you like zombies or horror fiction even a little bit, I strongly recommend you pick this up.
carol26388's review against another edition
Parts were very interesting, but it somehow didn't work for me. Maybe it is the sheer volume of zombies in all their various formats, both as subject and as backdrop. I made it through about a quarter of the book and gave it up. No fault of the writers, more an incompatibility between myself and zombies in short stories.
the_original_shelf_monkey's review against another edition
5.0
I’ll admit that zombies can be tiresome; not much personality, kind of slow, easily defeated on a one-to-one basis. Certain liberties must be taken with the mythos to make such creatures interesting over the course of 400+ pages, but Adams puts in just the right mix of classic monster mayhem and mythological experimentation to make the whole of The Living Dead an absolutely spectacular collection. There is everything a zombiphile could want; gore, satire; parody, gore, emotion, comedy, gore, sex, nostalgia, and gore.
Read the rest of the review here.
Read the rest of the review here.
alexctelander's review against another edition
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.
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