The Living Dead

One of the better zombie novels I've read and I read a lot. The characters drew me in and I was kept guessing who would survive. The ending was right for the book, but not for me, hence the 4 stars. Overall a great book.

If you follow my Goodreads or any of my accounts or just know me you KNOW I LOVE Zombies, movies, books - can't get enough. Romero movies I grew up with and when I heard this was a book he had a hand in, TAKE MY MONEY!!!I was planning on keeping this until October for my themed reads but I couldn't wait and had to dive in. I always said if I wrote a zombie book I would want it starting or cataloged at a hospital, this is close enough, a morgue.It spreads quickly and we visit a handful of characters as the outbreak hits and how they react and try to survive the undead. A teenager in a trailer park - crime, poverty racism and now battling to stay alive. A government employee, a pilot trying to prove her worth among the sailors and finding comfort with the carriers priest despite being an unbeliever, hoping the infection won't reach their vessel. A news station, staying online as long as possible, reporting on the stories as they get them. And in Washington, an employee logging all the information of the outbreak as she gets it, staying to the very end to ensure everything is catalogued, as long as people reach out - she has a job to do.A very mixed bag of characters, I have read and watched a fair amount of zombie stories. This one has the usual themes we see in them all but also a few wee new surprises that I hadn't seen or read before. Romero has given so much so to have this is just the icing on the cake - I would love to have a story, written, delving into the "Day of the Dead" characters, Doctor "Frankenstein" the soldiers, BUB (although I felt in this book we had a wee glimpse or nod to Bub and how he was different to his other fellow zombies). Maybe Kraus will try his hand at something like that, who wouldn't love to hear Bub's story and after reading this I think he well could be the man for the job. 4.5/5 for me, fingers and toes crossed this is something he would consider, I am now aware he has other books out there so will have a nosey at his works and see what he writes. If you are a zombie fan you really need to sink your teeth into this (see what I did there :P sorry, not sorry!).

This book is...confusing. It's a massive canvas, covering most of two decades as the dead rise, civilisation burns and humanity stares down extinction, but it's disjointed and hard to follow. The timeline skips all over the place as different characters face different situations and, in many case, just try to survive. Men and women and children run for their lives, fight to live or simply die.Bizarrely, the "Subject Zero" Zombie situation is almost funny. The Medical Examiner working on the partially autopsied body, not unreasonably, freaks out completely when it opens it's eyes and looks at him. He backs away and calls his boss, who answers that the dead are rising everywhere-then takes a header off the building he's atop. Someone else picks up the phone and says he doesn't know what's happening but, no, he can't put the owner back on the phone-they are 64 storeys up. At this point, the ME decides guns are the way to go.Then the story gets...complex, quickly. People are caught hopelessly flat-footed as the dead rise and slaughter the living everywhere. Among the few survivors are a trailer trash teenage girl with a gift for killing zombies, a newsreader who finds his vocation in the Zombie Apocalypse and a young woman, a military pilot who believes her Career is over before EVERYTHING blows up.The White House holds a press briefing that tells nobody anything except the authorities have no idea what's happening, how or why. But... The briefing only gets out because a reporter manages to smuggle a camera into the briefing, since preventing panic has now come to mean not telling anyone anything. The reporters themselves state everyone knows the dead are rising, but the Press Secretary refuses to confirm it. A long-time Producer on a news channel takes matters into his own hands to broadcast some truth, barricading himself and his team into a studio. They do a lot of good, but are up against arrogant stupidity as other survivors have different ideas about how to do these things.The military is portrayed as worse than useless. An Outbreak aboard an aircraft carrier and it's escorts see's catastrophe on a Biblical level as NOBODY grasps what's happening even as dozens of zombies storm the flight deck, even as the crew fight back any way they can using tools, vehicles and bare hands. The ships Priest comes to horrific conclusions and tries to do something terrible to "Right the wrongs" as he see's it. One Escort heads for harbour at flank speed and another turns in small circles as nobody aboard answers the radio. The only officer who has any grasp on the situation is left in a situation he quite possibly won't survive as the lunatics take over the Asylum...The book is certainly an interesting take on the "Dead" series, but I have certain issues.There is never any mention of the Emergency Broadcast System being activated to advise civilians on what to do in the crisis, but Romero has this happen himself in "Night of the Living Dead" in 1968. Why is never explained, especially in an age when communication is effectively instant? Maybe it's a comment on the current leadership of the USA?We get NO official point of view, beyond low-level public employees. Even if government essentially collapsed early on, it would have been interesting to see what they were doing, or trying to, or not? Did the police, military and CDC make any headway into coping with the Outbreak before the entire system fell apart?Finally, still, there is NO attempt to explain just WHY the dead rose. I suppose that's one secret Romero took with him...

I was attracted to this book due to being a huge fan of George Romero's movies. I initially purchased the audio book, but at times my disability can make it hard for me to take in audio books, so I also purchased the kindle edition. As always with kindle books, it is very used friendly, which is of benefit to me. Once I started reading this I couldn't put it down. It's well written and does remain faithful to the character of Romero's "...of the Dead" movies. I enjoyed the characterisation in particular.. It can be quite odd when some male authors write female characters, but I didn't feel like that was the case with this book. Instead I felt that there were accurate portrayals of how characters may well feel in the various scenarios in the book, which made the characters feel much more real to me.It is a long book, but in all honesty I flew through. I did end up feeling very tired for a couple of days, as I kept thinking "just one more chapter and I'll stop reading" only to find myself still going at 4am! I'll definitely be reading again at some point and I think fans of good zombie novels and movies will enjoy this book.