Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Zombie Five: “Those Who Seek Forgiveness” ,“In Beauty, Like The Night” ,“Prairie”,““Home Delivery”,“Everything is Better with Zombies”

“Those Who Seek Forgiveness” by Laurell K. Hamilton: For the fans of Anita Blake I think I have a real treat for you, since this is the first work ever to feature Anita Blake as a character. For me this was an interesting read, because I have had no chance of sampling Hamilton’s writing style with my poor time management skills. Working as an animator can be a tough nut to crack as a career and Anita has seen quite the share of people coming to her for her services, but nothing as weird as Carla Fiske. This particular client is her first precedent ever, losing a life during a reanimation. I won’t add spoilers, but the punch is in the end. Hamilton has put some effort into trying to explain the complex human rules of attachment and manages a satisfactory balance of both entertainment aka bloodshed and deeper meaning.

“In Beauty, Like The Night” by Norman Partridge: What I love about zombies is that you can have countless angles to look at them and mister Partridge provides an interesting concept to amp up the suspense. He mixes up an anti-hero protagonist, who I personally disliked as a human being, but wanted to be in regard to social status. Nathan Grimes is a big shot clone of Hugh Heffner in his younger years and knows how the world of money and seducing women better than anyone. So when the zombie plague hits the world he evacuates his photographer and a couple of his models on his private island, waiting for things to be over. However his plans go wrong, when the plane crashes and he discovers that the undead are mimicking the living. The cat and mouse game goes on a whole new level and at the same time sun tanned and erotic zombie models on an exotic island makes for a splendid read.

“Prairie” by Brian Evenson: I think that a reader has been acquainted with Cabeza de Vaca’s sixteenth century account of crossing North America after being shipwrecked, and Werner Herzog’s movie Aguirre, the Wrath of God perhaps there will be more understanding of what goes on in this story. I am as lost as a piece of debris in a tornado. What I can share is that it carries something quite disturbing in its simplicity and stating a fact nature. The acts that the protagonist names come out as outlandish and quite shocking, sine the authors plunges the reader in a world without much back story and goes on breaking the taboos without knowing whether they are within the norm.

“Everything is Better with Zombies” by Hannah Wolf Bowen: Despite the title sounding so much the story itself is rather tame and timid for a zombie story and carries a more soul searching sort of coming of age spirit that happens to have a main protagonist think about zombies a lot. In places it caught my interest; in others it didn’t. At large I can say that it didn’t quite resonate within me as a reader, so I am going to leave it at that. However I do believe that there will be people, who will find quite the little treasure.

“Home Delivery” by Stephen King: I think I can talk much on the subject of Stephen King as an entity in literature and on Home Delivery, but I will try to be short. No need to spoil the fun and there will be a lot of fun. The dead rise from the graves and it seems the reason seems to come from outer space, which immediately adds a certain flavor to the whole, even though the focus falls on a small island in the Pacific called by its inhabitants Jenny. I won’t comment on the writing, because Stephen King is the synonym for several compliments and repeating them would be futile. I can just say that the hairs on my back stood up on several places and I held my breath pretty much from the start. The protagonist in question is the pregnant widow Maddie Pace, who has to deal with the loss of her husband, his resurrection and the end of the world, considering she finds choosing the color of curtains hard. This story unfolded like a dream for me and I claim it as another favorite.

No comments:

Related Posts with Thumbnails