Friday, October 26, 2012

Gravel & Gems: In the Dead by Jesse Petersen

Title: “In the Dead” by Jesse Petersen
Zombie Type: Romero-Style for the most part. Though very infectious with “Black Sludge” coming from them to infect others; they are dead and not just infected a la 28 days later.

Time of Setting: Varies with each short story, though most are at the outbreak.
Main Characters: Main characters vary with each story.

Synopsis: Jesse Petersen is known for the Living With The Dead series of Zombie Novels, which play on various popular books with titles like “Married with Zombies”, “Flip This Zombie”, and “Eat, Slay, Love”. Despite the titles they deal with a single set of characters, a couple who are in marriage counseling when the Zombie Apocalypse hit; thus the title of the first book. The others are their continuing adventures in the western USA after civilization has fallen. I’ll do more comprehensive reviews of them at another time.
     In this anthology-style book the author gives several short stories set in the LWTD universe but with new characters. Each short story deals with two people (usually a couple) dealing with the Zombie Apocalypse in one way or the other. Though many of the stories are at the beginning of the outbreak, a couple is set well afterwards.

     This book, while overall a good read, is not for people who get attached to characters or don’t like short stories. If you haven’t read Petersen’s other books you might feel a bit lost. Still, if you’re a fan of (mostly) outbreak stories and people whom are not Commandos dealing with zombies, this is a good book to look at. It’s listed as volume I, so I assume more will be in the offing. I believe its e-copy only at this time, but if any of my readers know if its available as hardcopy please let me know.
Rating: Four Head Shots out of five

Zombie Chow

4 comments:

Simon Quinton said...

Thanks for the review. I will add this to the list and look up the previous books cheers!

Zombie Chow said...

Thanks, let me know how you like them? They have some humor in them, but not as much as say Zombieland or Shawn of the Dead. BTW, Happy Birthday! ;)

I'm reading another zombie book called "Necropolis Ascending", which is based in England and the term "Brummie" is used as a sort of reference to someone from a part of Britain. Can you share that idiom? ;)

ZC

David Cooke said...

Thanks for the review! I've a book on order and this one can be next.

Zombie Chow said...

Glad the review could help...Let me know what your take of it is?

ZC