Comet Press’ DEADCORE is a collection of four diverse zombie-themed novellas from four equally diverse and worthy voices.
The book is a handsome trade paperback, layout comfortable to read. A small number of grammatical errors might jar readers bothered by such things out of their reading experience briefly.
Randy Chandler’s “Dead Juju” is a wild, graphic ride--a fast-paced array of elements including religion, politics, race relations, news media, socio-economic classism, contumacy--all handled with skillful precision as Chandler gives us deft glimpses of humanity in all its chaotic, whacked out splendor. Nearly exhausted at the end, I wanted even more.
David James Keaton gnaws his tongue-in-cheek to a bloody stump in “Zee Bee & Bee” a slick stream-of-consciousness (consciousness? Zombies?) tale. On its surface, the snarky narrative seems almost too clever, but read beyond the obvious genre affection and surprisingly heart-felt details of everyday life and you come away with a strange nostalgia and fear for a self-absorbed culture’s obsession with their next slice of entertainment.
Modern humanity doesn’t possess the exclusive rights to mass mindlessness as feudal Japan gets the undead treatment in Edward M. Erdelac’s “Night of the Jikininki.” The nicely detailed story turns the honorable samurai legend on its stone-cold ear with some of the most loathsome characters and acts ever.
Ben Cheetham’s grim techno-hunter story “Zombie Safari” is the most conventional of the four. Although well-written and intriguing, it suffers somewhat from the originality of the stories that precede it. Suggestion: read these novellas in reverse order.
--WALT HICKS
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