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A review by sjlee
The Living Dead by John Joseph Adams
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.