Nights of the Living Dead (2017)
Mostly chewed over…but a few juicy parts.
Zombie films and tv shows like The Walking Dead (and the comic that spawned it) bring the undead to life…but the best horror leaves at least part of the story to the grainy black and white of the imagination.
That has always made me a sucker for a good zombie book. While images of brain munching are disturbing - and the inevitable ghoul in the garage might make me jump - they pale in comparison to the horror a powerful story can inspire.
Nights of the Living Dead isn’t a particularly good zombie book…or especially inspired, despite drawing from solid source material and including an interesting intro - and a passable story - by no less than the late (unrisen) George A. Romero, granddaddy of the modern zombie genre.
The premise is encouraging: invite a horde of established horror writers to scribe stories set during or immediately after the events of the 1968 Night of the Living Dead. Anthologies are often uneven though and this one is no exception.
The Good: While most of the stories are uninspired, a couple do gnaw at the imagination. The most creative is Jay Bonansinga’s Fast Entry, which weaves Coast-to-Coast tropes like remote viewing, psychic powers, and even a little witchcraft into a harsh, decidedly physical milieu of zombie blood and bone and guts. Mike Carey’s In That Quiet Earth has its moments as well, as a doctor experiments with an…unusual…“if you can’t beat ‘em…” approach to living in a world of the undead.
The Bad: The majority of the stories are predictable, preachy, and self-indulgent. Nothing wrong with a little of any of those provided the stories are interesting, but most are a painful slog.
The Annoying: I don’t often pay much mind to editing, but some of the fine and gross details of the book irritated me to distraction. The biggest were anachronisms like a story of a soldier returning from Vietnam (appropriate in a 1968 setting) in which characters make regular use of cell phones…or the whole premise of David Wellington’s Orbital Decay, a tale taking place on the International Space Station…also in 1968. That said, the editors are pretty clever in softly weaving together some of the stories (hmmm…is that horse the one in that other story…is this zombie the woman in the barn…is that the car those kids were driving?)…which, in a sense, makes the rest all the more jarring.
So what is the verdict?
Meh…Nights of the Living Dead, like its subject matter, stumbles around a lot, only occasionally biting the reader. It is a decent enough collection, with a couple of very good stories and a lot of - charitably - mediocre ones. If you are a Romero fan you will want to pick it up just for his intro (and somewhat lackluster story) but if not, you may wonder why you handed over your shekels on this rather than investing in Twinkies and Spam.
Check out Nights of the Living Dead HERE and let us know what you think.
Two out of Five Giggling Ghouls.
🧟🧟
Dig Romero and his shufflers? You may want to check out one of these.
