Zombie Apocalypse! - Book Review

Zombie Apocalypse! (Zombie Apocalypse! #1)
by Pat Cadigan, Paul McAuley, Robert Hood, Michael Marshall Smith, Tim Lebbon, Christopher Fowler, Paul Finch , Sarah Pinborough, John Llewellyn Probert, Kim Newman, Lisa Morton, Scott Edelman, Peter Crowther, Peter Atkins, Tanith Lee, and Stephen Jones (Editor)

What is it about:
In the near future, a desperate and ever-more controlling UK government attempts to restore a sense of national pride with a New Festival of Britain. But construction work on the site of an old church in south London releases a centuries-old plague that turns its victims into flesh-hungry ghouls whose bite or scratch passes the contagion - a supernatural virus which has the power to revive the dead - on to others.

'The Death' soon sweeps across London and the whole country descends into chaos. When a drastic attempt to eradicate the outbreak at source fails, the plague spreads quickly to mainland Europe and then across the rest of the world.

Told through a series of interconnected eyewitness narratives - text messages, e-mails, blogs, letters, diaries and transcripts - this is an epic story of a world plunged into chaos as the dead battle the living for total domination.

What did I think of it:
This is a really cool read.

It's written by several authors and is set up to look like a collection of letters, e-mails, transcripts, etc... detailing the events just before and during a zombie outbreak.

Of course there were parts I like better than others: Tanith Lee's Letters from a Tower - in which an elderly lady writes to a friend about her experience - was the absolute best part imo, followed by Things Past - in which a man writes a long overdue email to his mother - by Michael Marshall Smith, but I didn't much care for the Internal Communication letters by Mandy Slater (company letters to personnel) for example.

I'm also not a fan of the use of 'handwriting'. Yes, there were handwritten letters and diary pages, but using a font that looks like handwriting makes that I get dragged out of the story because I have to decipher the handwriting.

That annoyance aside this is a very cool zombie book and I might give the next book a try if I can find it for a reasonable price.

Why should you read it:
It's a very enjoyable Zombie read.


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