“…Most skels, they moved. They came to eat you-not all of you, but a nice chomp here or there, enough to pass on the plague. Cut off their feet, chop off their legs, and they’d gnash the air as they heaved themselves forward by their splintered fingernails, looking for some ankle action…”

Book Review:

Review by Bill Brody  (OCT 18, 2011)

Zone One by Colson Whitehead plays on the archetype of apocalyptic zombie literature. The unnamed protagonist is known as Mark Spitz, because he is afraid to swim. He is a sweeper, someone assigned by the pseudo-government in Buffalo to destroy any zombie AKA skel or catatonic victim AKA straggler of the plague that has destroyed civilization. The zombies are virtually mindless with a lust for human flesh that can only be quenched by destroying their heads. A zombie’s bite is what spreads the infection. Stragglers just stay immobilized where they stopped. They do nothing, even in response to attack. Both are routinely exterminated by a lethal strike to the head via bullet, baseball bat, axe or what have you. The authorities in Buffalo are sponsored by the remnants of corporations and are in touch with similar enclaves around the world

Everyone suffers from PASD, or Post Apocalyptic Stress Disorder. Every survivor has killed, starved, and betrayed others in order to survive and has horrific flashbacks. Nobody is immune to PASD. The horrors of Last Night (when the plague started) and its sequelae have taken all joy out of life. This is dystopia maxima.

Pheenies, non military survivors, do the grunt work. Mark Spitz is a pheenie, but as a sweeper, he is more or less privileged, better off than many and somewhat valued. He has always wanted to live in Manhattan. Now he has been assigned as part of a team to mop up zone one, the first part of Manhattan to be cleared of skels and stragglers and made safe for a rebirth of civilization. Mark is “everyman.” He never stands out; neither brilliant nor dunce, leader nor blind follower. He ekes out survival and remembers horror upon horror like everyone else except the skels, the stragglers and the dead.

We have a brilliant exposition of survivor guilt; of the dehumanization that derives from inhuman behavior. The prose is poetic and compelling. It has the awful beauty full of grue that is required to represent a world gone mad. No one is a survivor in this world; they are all dead, brain dead or going to die. The dead and the dying are all ugly. Paranoia is the norm. What is delusional are hope and belief in a future. Is this a judgment like Sodom and Gomorra, a revolt by Gaia, or just an unlucky roll of the dice over and over and over again unto bleak horror and total despair? We never learn why skels do not eat stragglers or why they do not fall on each other in an orgy of eat and be eaten. How can any creature, no matter how torpid survive with absolutely no food? Who cares in a story about zombies; and one so well-written!

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 342 readers
PUBLISHER:	Doubleday (October 18, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bill Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Colson Whitehead
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Sag Harbor And more dystopian problem futures: The Passage by Justin Cronin The Good and the Ghastly by James Boice

Bibliography:

• The Intuitionist (1998)
• John Henry Days (2001)
• Apex Hides the Hurt (2006)
• Sag Harbor (2009)
• Zone One (2011)

Other:

• The Colossus of  New York (2004)
• The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death (2004)

“Ohhhhhhhhhh!” she cried, rolling her head and grabbing Mary with one hand, Kitty with the other. “My last hope, gone! Instead of throwing my eldest in the path of eligible bachelors, they’re to be thrown to the unmentionables! And so go the rest of us, girls—to a potter’s field or down a dreadful’s gullet, one or the other! And all because your father started taking orders from some ponytailed stripling who doesn’t even have the sense to cook his fish!”

Lydia and Kitty joined in with weeping of their own, and even Mary’s eyes took to watering behind her spectacles (though Elizabeth suspected this had more to do with the way her mother was crushing her hand).

When Elizabeth glanced at Hawksworth to gauge his reaction to the spectacle, she was surprised to find him intently gauging hers.

Book Review:

Review by Ann Wilkes (MAY 13, 2010)

In Dawn of the Dreadfuls, Steve Hockensmith takes Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and adds a generous helping of dry humor and zombies. What’s not to love? Here are the first two lines, which promise much more fun to come:

“Walking in the middle of a funeral would be, of course, bad form. So attempting to walk out on one’s own was beyond the pale.”

And Hockensmith doesn’t disappoint in this prequel to the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

At the ill-fated funeral, Mr. Bennett clears the church except for the vicar and his girls. His four daughters learn their father is more than just a long-suffering, hen-pecked man with a saving sense of humor. He’s expert at killing zombies. In fact, it’s a skill the secret order expected him to pass down to his children.

Mr. Bennett knows that a zombie incursion begins with just one zombie. Ignoring the shrieking protests of Mrs. Bennett, he throws all his wife’s flowers out of his dojo-turned-potting-shed to begin training his children in the deadly arts.

Soon, a handsome young warrior, trained in the East and sent by their father’s secret order of zombie hunters takes over their training. Lizzy makes up for her lack of skill with more than her fair share of determination. Under Master Hawksworth’s tutelage, Lizzy becomes a formidable foe to the many zombies who dare cross her path.

Unlike most Victorians Lizzy encounters, Dr. Bertram Keckilpenny is untroubled by her training outfit, straightforward manner, hunting skills and lack of squeamishness. When Lizzy meets him, he is made up to look like a zombie to test his theory that they are no danger to each other and to people they mistake for their kind.

Lizzy’s life is complicated by these two men and keeping her sister, Jane, safe from the philandering Lord Lumpley. The Lord makes a pretense of courting her naïve sister. Elizabeth Bennett manages all this while saving England from zombies.

I enjoyed seeing Mr. Bennett get his day, having a vital purpose rather than just hiding away in his library. Dawn of the Dreadfuls kept me amused for days. I didn’t want it to end.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 78 readers
PUBLISHER:	Quirk Books; Original edition (March 23, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Ann Wilkes
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Steve Hockensmith
EXTRAS:	Trailer for the book Quirk Classics web page for more mash-ups Ann Wilkes interview with Steve Hockensmith
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More Jane Austen fan reads: Beginner’s Greek by James Collins The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Fowler More Zombie fiction: Cemetery Dance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child Not sure if there is a Zombie in this one, but check it out anyway: The Devil You Know by Mike Carey

Bibliography:

Holmes on the Range series:

• Holmes on the Range (2006)
• On the Wrong Track (2007)
• The Black Dove (2008)
• The Crack in the Lens (July 2009)
• The World’s Greatest Sleuth (January 2011)

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies series:

• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith (October 2009)
• Dawn of the Dreadfuls (March 2010)

More Quirk Classic Mash-ups:

• Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters (September 2009)
• Android Karenina by Leo Tolstory and Ben H. Winters(June 2010)