“This place has always been ruled by the vampire lords. Now they are plotting to destroy the city. Over my dead body”. For the second entry in Zombie Appreciation Month we move away from the end of the world toward a detective novel with a twist. I’m sure you can guess the nature of the twist? Nekropolis by Tim Waggoner is the first outing for the zombie detective. Hundreds of years ago, Father Dis and the five lesser Dark Lords brought all of the Darkfolk together. To avoid continued persecution by humans they left Earth and travelled to an alternate dimension where Father Dis created Nekropolis. The city is split into five different dominions with one of the lords in charge of each. In Nekropolis you’ll find vampires, lykes (shapeshifters), demons, witches and warlocks, the undead and everything in-between. Matt Richter is an ex-cop from Cleveland who stumbled into Nekropolis during the course of an investigation. While there he died but has since been reanimated as the city’s only self-willed zombie. Unable to return to Earth due to his undead state, he does favours for people in return for dark gems. He uses the dark gems to pay for the…

Welcome to Zombie Appreciation Month. Throughout October The Eloquent Page will take a look at different interpretations of zombies in modern literature. To begin with I’ve decided to start with a classic theme. I give you The End of the World. Will humanity triumph over the worldwide zombie plague, or will the walking dead inherit the earth? It seems only fair that the first book that I’m looking at is the one that gave me the idea in the first place. There were a number of book launches at this year’s FantasyCon in Nottingham, and this book immediately caught my eye. With a few notable exceptions, I’m not a huge fan of anthologies. As a rule, I prefer to read novels written by one author, but in an effort to broaden my horizons I decided to take a chance. Zombie Apocalypse! chronicles the worldwide spread of ‘The Death’. Starting in London, and then rapidly spreading across the globe the reader is given the opportunity to delve into the lives of those affected. In this case I think having multiple authors was entirely the right decision. There is one world, and one event, but each author has the opportunity to have…

Time to sneak in just one more review before Zombie Appreciation Month begins. After reading Patient Zero I was very keen to read more of Jonathan Maberry’s work. I really liked his idea of terrorists creating a pathogen that reanimates the dead and using them as a bio-weapon. Patient Zero whips along at a breakneck pace and I found the writing superb. In its sequel, The Dragon Factory, Joe Ledger and Echo team are back. However, no zombies this time out. Instead, the team are in a race against time to stop a maniacal billionaire geneticist who has plans to reinvent the human race. He has put together a globe spanning scheme called the Extinction Wave that targets only certain genetic groups. When the story begins, none of Department of Military Science are aware of what’s going on. For a sizeable chunk of the novel they are largely ignorant of the scale of the threat they are facing. The characters were left fumbling around in the dark, and playing catch up all the way through, which adds some additional tension for the reader. The billionaire, Cyrus Jakoby, makes a compelling villain. He is entirely single minded and the absolute embodiment…

“Secret Experiment. Tiny Island. Big Mistake” At its most basic level, the story in Ancestor by Scott Sigler could be described as a number of chases. Firstly, we have the US government trying to track down renegade bio-engineering company Genada, as they try to operate above the law. Then we have the story of evil predators chasing people around an inhospitable island in the dead of winter. It would be really easy to right off this novel as just that, but I strongly urge you not to. Ancestor is so much more and is worthy of your time. What the author has done is to take a simple enough premise and add some welcome additional depth. The core of the novel is the topical subject of genetic manipulation. Should humans tinker with nature? Is the quest for profit enough of a reason to fool around with things we don’t fully understand? On the island of Black Manitou, the characters are split into three groups. Firstly, there is a group of scientists who are attempting to create a creature that can be a used as a universal organ donor. Using genetic engineering they are in a race against time to create…

“When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week, then there’s either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world. And there’s nothing wrong with my skills.” I have a confession to make. I’m thoroughly unsettled by zombies. It doesn’t matter if they are the old style slowly shuffling undead or fast moving rage fuelled beasts made popular over the last couple of years. The whole concept leaves an unpleasant sensation in the pit of my stomach. I think that it’s something to do with the thought that they were once alive. They were just like you or I. Now they are nothing –  just an empty husk with the singular purpose of destruction. In an effort to face my fears I have started reading quite a lot of zombie fiction. Ironically, this constant observation of all things zombie has made me become slightly obsessive about them. Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry has an interesting take on the zombie mythos. There are no supernatural elements at work here. These zombies are the product of scientific research. The main crux of the novel is that terrorists have developed a virus that kills swiftly and then…

Occasionally I enjoy nothing better than reading a big old doorstop of a novel. You know the sort of thing I mean. Big enough that you know your wrists are in danger of snapping if you try and read more than about 100 pages in a single sitting, The Passage falls into this category. With seven hundred and sixty-six pages all in, you can be sure that this story is epic in scope and promise. The book is split into two sections.  Part one tells the story of military genetic experimentation gone wrong. Seen primarily through the eyes of a world weary FBI agent, the reader learns of the US Army’s plans to create man made vampires (it’s ok they don’t sparkle…they glow). The Authorities end up getting more than they bargained for, and their worst fears are realised when the vampires escape. Cronin manages to generate a real sense of despair and loss here. All the main characters are broken in one way or another. Special Agent Brad Wolgast is haunted by the family he lost. Six year old Amy is left abandoned by her mother at the doors of a convent. The ending of this part of the…