Horror | Read All Over Reviews

Archive for the ‘ Horror ’ Category

Book Review: Road Trip of the Living Dead by Mark Henry

Funny, gory, as full of snarky footnotes as the previous book ( Happy Hour of the Damned ), it’s a road trip to the Midwest that only Amanda Feral could experience.

Okay, road trips can be a bit difficult for vampires, but Gil is very motivated to get out of town, as his last client didn’t have such a great conversion experience (what with being peed on by a ghost and all).

And when Amanda and Wendy find out they’re crossed off the guest list for the opening of a new club and Gil is nearly eaten by werewolves, what better to do than to drive to South Dakota to see Amanda’s dying mother. Who Amanda hates. A lot.

Along the way they run into a creepy family traveling in a trailer; two creepy (but less creepy) boys who could be a couple cultists traveling the Midwest, a (hot) werewolf cop, and two girls, one of whom turns out to be . . . you’re gonna have to read it to find *that* out!

Amanda is still shallow but she seems to be gaining in the empathy department–as much as a zombie can have empathy anyway. If I wasn’t afraid that she’d a) eat me or b) make fun of my clothing, I think I might even hang out with her. If she’d allow me to.

Shop Indie Bookstores
-or-
Purchase online from Amazon

Jennifer

Jennifer works as a production editor for a major publishing company in NYC but will not review any books put out by the company (under any imprint) on this site since that can be considered a conflict of interest. Areas of interest include Robin Hood, pirates, zombies (and horror in general), Beowulf (and other early English literature, though Beowulf has a soft spot in her heart), medieval history, Celtic history and literature, history of diseases, and some odd subjects like bog bodies. She lives in New Jersey with a husband and a cat. You can find her on LibraryThing, Twitter, and Goodreads.

Happy Hour of the Damned by Mark Henry

Amanda Feral is shallow, stone-cold bitch. Unless she’s got a few drinks in her–then she’s just a shallow bitch. I’d never hang out with her but then I’m sure she’d never hang out with me either. But there’s one thing that does make her interesting. Amanda Feral is a zombie.

Yep, a shallow, bitchy clothes-horse of a zombie.

I’ve never read a book where the protagonist is a zombie. How could you possibly have a zombie protagonist when all zombies do are shamble around and munch on humans, nary a thought process to be seen? So I know you’re wondering the same thing I was: How in the world can she be a zombie and not only string enough words together coherently to be bitchy but coordinated enough to dress herself? But it turns out there are TWO types of zombies! Those who are made and those classified as mistakes. The made zombies can hide just like other supernatural creatures, hence our lack of knowledge of them. All we ever see are the mistakes–the shambling cannibals of countless movies that we know and love. (Okay, maybe not everyone loves zombies, but I find people who don’t to be highly suspect.) Read more

Jennifer

Drood by Dan Simmons

Synopsis
On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, 53-year-old Charles Dickens–at the height of his powers and popularity, the most famous and successful novelist in the world and perhaps in the history of the world–hurtled into a disaster that changed his life forever.

Did Dickens begin living a dark double life after the accident? Were his nightly forays into the worst slums of London and his deepening obsession with corpses, crypts, murder, opium dens, the use of lime pits to dissolve bodies, and a hidden subterranean London mere research . . . or something more terrifying?

Review
I scored this from LibraryThing Early Reviewers and the publisher was awesome enough to send me a finished book! Yes, it could double as a doorstop, but that’s never stopped me reading a book before.
Read more