Zombies! discussion

I was going to post a rant about this, but starting with a rant for your first post is never a good idea....plus really this is just my opinion and others will most definitely disagree.

So...I'm getting a little sick of the beginning of zombie novels. They all seem the same with the only real difference being the type of zombie (fast VS slow) or the cause of the outbreak. Personally, as a fellow creator, I don't see why an author would want to write the same story as every other zombie author out there.

I really need some new stories to read that keep my annoyance for the beginning in mind. Some good examples of what I've read and liked are...

•The Reapers Are the Angels: Takes place 25 years after the fall and is highly character driven.

•Demise of the Living: Though it does take place during the rise, the apocalypse is more of a backdrop to the human drama.

•Dead Living: The apocalypse is only like a chapter or two at the very beginning...then it goes on to a character driven plotline.

•Ex-Heroes: Takes place after the fall but does flash back to the beginning. But superheroes and zombies? That gets a pass either way :-)

I just really don't want to read another "Character A lived a quiet life till the apocalypse hit. Now He/She has to fight to survive while traveling to find his/her wife/husband/brother/sister/mother/father" story.

Any suggestions?

You might like The Variant Effect, it starts some years after the "outbreak" (it's not really a virus in this case) with a cop who is chasing a particularly bad zombie type. It's wicked gory and I would totally not plan on eating while reading it, it literally made me nauseous and I'm not a pushover when it comes to gore. But I really liked it- haven't read the sequels yet but I mean to.

sorry, here's the goodreads link- had to go find it :)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...

Deirdre wrote: "sorry, here's the goodreads link- had to go find it :)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8..."

Thanks Deirdre, I'll have to check that out

How about:

Year 50

More:

Zombie Apocalypse: A Very Good Man

Zombie, Inc.

Bandwidth

Out of Darkness

Randy wrote: "How about:

Year 50"

Awesome....and bought :-)

I just finished Undead on Arrival. It was pretty fantastic, and set 5 years after the apocalypse.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

I would recommend The Last Day in the Life of Jillian
Unique short story by self-published author, character driven. I enjoyed it a lot.

The Benny Imura series (starting with Rot and Ruin) by Jonathan Maberry takes place about 20 years after the zombie outbreak. There are flashbacks to "first night" but the 4 novels take place largely 20+ years removed. Its young adult but well written and better than Maberry's adult zombie books with Joe Ledger.

If I can pitch my own work, you might check out The Colony: Genesis. Normally I don't tout myself, but the reason I started writing this series (Genesis is the first of probably 5 or 6 volumes) is that I saw the same ol' same ol' in a lot of zombie fiction. And it's got a 4.5 star average on Amazon, with raves from major reviewers and horror afficionados, so there's that. ;o)

I recently read Zone One and thought it was quite good if you haven't already read it.

 In this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. 

Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuild­ing civilization under orders from the provisional govern­ment based in Buffalo. Their top mission: the resettlement of Manhattan. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street—aka Zone One—but pockets of plague-ridden squatters remain. While the army has eliminated the most dangerous of the infected, teams of civilian volunteers are tasked with clearing out a more innocuous variety—the “malfunctioning” stragglers, who exist in a catatonic state, transfixed by their former lives. 

Mark Spitz is a member of one of the civilian teams work­ing in lower Manhattan. Alternating between flashbacks of Spitz’s desperate fight for survival during the worst of the outbreak and his present narrative, the novel unfolds over three surreal days, as it depicts the mundane mission of straggler removal, the rigors of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder, and the impossible job of coming to grips with the fallen world. 

And then things start to go wrong. 

Both spine chilling and playfully cerebral, Zone One bril­liantly subverts the genre’s conventions and deconstructs the zombie myth for the twenty-first century. 

Thanks for all the suggestions...looks like I'll have a few months of reading material