Saturday, January 30, 2016

Review: Byron : A Zombie Tale (Part 1)

Byron : A Zombie Tale (Part 1) Byron : A Zombie Tale (Part 1) by Scott Wieczorek
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was told this book would be a zombie tale in the vein of Warm Bodies or iZombie. Maybe not so much the former (although the movie is closer in tone to this book than the original Isaac Marion book), but the latter? A little more right on the money. Right from the get-go, the book gets into some gloriously grossgusting territory that also easily invites comparisons to that holy grail of zombie-based awesomeness, Zombieland. I mean, those early chapters with the blood everywhere, and the ugly goiter-like swellings? All I would need is the ability to read this while eating tonight's ravioli lasagna dinner (I've not mastered the art of balancing phones and/or computers with dinner plates, whereas I've done the same with physical books for well over half my life), and my evening would have been complete.

My only complaint is the way Byron's love interest is handled. Nothing against Elise - she's super-cool - but it feels like Byron falls in love with her way too quickly. To his credit, though, he points out that very fact in his narration, so he's at least aware of the fact that he's fallen victim to a common trope - which is far more than I can say for most characters. And given this book's mixture of unconventional ideas (some of which, I think, are references to Scott Sigler's Infected series), it's okay to fall back on a hackneyed one or two.

The ending, however, is unbelievably tragic, yet balances surprisingly well with the Bloody Hilarious black comedy of the book's start.

Can't wait to read the next part of Byron's story!

View all my reviews

No comments:

Post a Comment