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Summary
Summary
"A horror landmark and a work of gory genius."--Joe Hill, New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman
New York Times bestselling author Daniel Kraus completes George A. Romero's brand-new masterpiece of zombie horror, the massive novel left unfinished at Romero's death!
George A. Romero invented the modern zombie with Night of the Living Dead , creating a monster that has become a key part of pop culture. Romero often felt hemmed in by the constraints of film-making. To tell the story of the rise of the zombies and the fall of humanity the way it should be told, Romero turned to fiction. Unfortunately, when he died, the story was incomplete.
Enter Daniel Kraus, co-author, with Guillermo del Toro, of the New York Times bestseller The Shape of Water (based on the Academy Award-winning movie) and Trollhunters (which became an Emmy Award-winning series), and author of The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch (an Entertainment Weekly Top 10 Book of the Year). A lifelong Romero fan, Kraus was honored to be asked, by Romero's widow, to complete The Living Dead .
Set in the present day, The Living Dead is an entirely new tale, the story of the zombie plague as George A. Romero wanted to tell it.
It begins with one body.
A pair of medical examiners find themselves battling a dead man who won't stay dead.
It spreads quickly.
In a Midwestern trailer park, a Black teenage girl and a Muslim immigrant battle newly-risen friends and family. On a US aircraft carrier, living sailors hide from dead ones while a fanatic makes a new religion out of death. At a cable news station, a surviving anchor keeps broadcasting while his undead colleagues try to devour him. In DC, an autistic federal employee charts the outbreak, preserving data for a future that may never come.
Everywhere, people are targeted by both the living and the dead.
We think we know how this story ends.
We. Are. Wrong.
Author Notes
George Andrew Romero was born in the Bronx, New York on February 4, 1940. He received a degree in graphic arts from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1960. He learned the film business working on the sets of movies. He created the modern zombie genre with his 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. His other films included Dawn of the Dead, Knightriders, Creepshow, Day of the Dead, Bruiser, Land of the Dead, and Diary of the Dead. He created the comic book series The Empire of the Dead in 2014. He died from lung cancer on July 16, 2017 at the age of 77.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Filmmaker Romero (1940--2017), best known for Night of the Living Dead, offers a sweeping look at the rise, fall, and rebirth of humanity in the face of a zombie menace in this long-winded horror novel, posthumously completed by Kraus (Bent Heavens). Patient zero appears in "the early months of the 21st century," when a John Doe is registered to the U.S. Census Bureau twice: once upon his death and again after the medical examiner shoots his reawakened body. From there the virus spreads, reaching a large but underdeveloped cast, among them a teenager living in a trailer park, a news anchor who sequesters himself in his studio to continuously broadcast news of the zombie panic even after he's no longer sure if anyone's watching, and a chaplain aboard the USS Olympia who slowly goes mad. Throughout, the zombie threat is granted its own, second-person perspective: "You are hungry. You wake up. In that order." In this innovation alone Romero paints a fresher picture of the zombie apocalypse, following the zombie's perspective 15 years into the future to examine the lifespan and evolution of the creatures. Otherwise, this doorstopper reads like an extended cut of Romero's horror films. This belabored amalgamation of zombie tropes is epic but familiar. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts Entertainment. (June)
Booklist Review
The late George Romero created the modern zombie with his film Night of the Living Dead (1968), kicking off a golden era for human-chewing ghouls. This thick tome, begun by Romero and finished by Kraus (The Shape of Water, 2018), reboots the onset of the zombies, shifting it from the sixties to modern times and setting the action in aircraft carriers and news studios. The novel otherwise sticks closely to the tone of Romero's Dead movies, with gruesome action giving way to more orderly living/dead relations. Some might find these later scenes of humans trying to figure out how to live with zombies unsatisfying, but most will be thrilled by the plentiful early fright scenes and impressed by how well the book hangs together. The authors marshal a vast cast here and, despite Kraus completing Romero's unfinished work, the book always feels consistent and the characters' journeys are convincing. It's not a perfect work--there are awkward anti-technology screeds that read like Luddite reddit posts--but Romero's final foray into zombie territory is easily his best work in decades. Zombie fans should be thrilled. [HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Horror fans will be ravenous for this book that brings Romero's work back to life.]
Library Journal Review
Horror novelist and lifelong Romero fan Kraus (with Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water) "collaborated" with the late, great zombie filmmaker Romero to complete this epic work that incorporates "Easter eggs"' from across Romero's oeuvre. The novel spans from a few days before the start of the zombie apocalypse through the following 15 years. Drawing from Romero's papers, interviews, films, and exhaustive research, and with his own storytelling prowess, Kraus completes a zombie tale for the ages. Written from multiple points of view and featuring a diverse cast of characters, this lengthy tome is made accessible via short chapters that keep the pace moving briskly. The zombies are terrifyingly realistic, but it is the well-developed human characters that readers will appreciate, particularly Etta Hoffmann, autistic researcher and archivist of the apocalypse. This is a rare gem of a story, one that pays homage to its varied source material across numerous films, books, comics, and more, while also standing on its own merits. Kraus's extensive author's note adds appeal. VERDICT A true gift to horror fans. Pairs well with Nights of the Living Dead, edited by Romero and others, with appeal for fans of apocalyptic epics such as Chuck Wendig's Wanderers and Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven.