Like many impressive zombie narratives, this tale wrestles with humans’ deeper connection to the undead.
This horror novel sees a trio of friends embark on a road trip during a zombie apocalypse.
In Tucson, Arizona, Desré Dupuy is an Air Force veteran in love with Blake Edwards, a musicology student. Blake’s best friend, Granville Preston Gordon, is a former Navy MP, and together they form the Trio de Dio. They share a weekly movie night featuring zombie flicks. Though Gran asserts that “all of life is in those movies,” Des is sick of the cheesy Hollywood productions. She convinces her friends to celebrate the birthday of Marie Laveaux, a 19th-century Condomblé priestess and Acadian heroine. They create an altar, burn their troubles (like Blake’s eviction notice) in an abalone shell, and dance to banda music. Despite being enlightened, Gran insists that a zombie apocalypse is near because he dreamed it—and his dreams always come true. The next morning, a horrible stench assaults the Trio. Outside the crummy apartment complex, the dead have indeed risen. So begins the Trio’s journey, taking them through Texas and Louisiana and toward Des’ relatives in South Carolina, who live on the “Fish-Camp” reservation. Along the way, natural disasters strike and new friends pop up. In this series opener, Curaçao (Walker, 2018), Edwards (Strange Diary Days, 2018), and debut author Kalkwarf enter the well-trod genre with narrative guns blazing. They give longtime fans exactly what they crave with descriptions like “part of her face was gone, blown away, from the looks of it,” and “all her internal organs were missing. It was just a body cavity…spine showing through.” The overall tone is light, sharpened with self-awareness, as in the line “A fire axe, just waiting there for me like it had been drawn in by some supernatural narrator.” Sometimes the tendency to tell rather than show infects the proceedings, as with a rant about Des’ awful neighbor, Dino. But the theme that family is important—and that all humans are related—is an excellent one. The notion that zombies represent a modern-day Ragnarok, humanity’s natural end, is as captivating as it is terrifying.
Like many impressive zombie narratives, this tale wrestles with humans’ deeper connection to the undead.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-5255-4540-5
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Bothsams Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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