A review by readbyashleyd
The Living Dead by George A. Romero, Daniel Kraus

4.0

As soon as I hear the word zombies, I’m pretty much all in. Add in George Romero’s name and I am HERE FOR IT. Do keep in mind when reading this though that, Daniel Kraus finished this book, not Romero. Kraus estimates that about 1/3 of the book was written by Romero, not including notes and other material where Romero plotted out where the book was going. That being said, when I was reading, I didn’t feel like I was reading something that was started by one author and finished by another. Both authors voices are weaved throughout and I really think it was spectacularly done. Now onto the book itself! Act 1 was a bit slow for me, it was a big information dump that was laying out the story to come and it got a bit long at times and that was my only issue with this book, it could have been a lot shorter and snappier! Once we got to Act 2 and 3 though, I was enjoying the HELL out of it. I loved seeing all the characters come together and the connections between all of them popping up. Characters and plot aside though, the zombies truly are the best part of the book. Romero and Kraus created something really unique with the zombies in this book and I don’t want to say too much and spoil it but what they did is just phenomenal! And I couldn’t have read this at a better time, with what’s going on in the world right now with the pandemic and the governments response, the parallels between the book and real life are quite eerie!