Nights of the Living Dead

June 15, 2017

In 1968, director Romero's Night of the Living Dead, which depicted 48 hours of a zombie outbreak, took the movie world by storm. Here, author Maberry (Patient Zero) and Romero bring us back to those two days of the newly risen dead with this anthology of 19 tales. Along with original stories by both men, there are entries such as Joe R. Lansdale's "Dead Man's Curve," in which a brother and sister come face to face with the undead during a drag race, and Mira Grant's "You Can Stay All Day," about a young zookeeper. All of these stories highlight the fear, darkness, hope, and humor facing the living dead can bring. VERDICT Zombie fiction fans can't get enough of their favorite monsters, but this masterly collection of tales from some of today's greatest speculative writers will sate their appetite--for a while.--KC

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2017
George A. Romero made a small film in 1968 that changed pop culture forever. As Maberry explains in the introduction to this stellar collection, No one who saw Night of the Living Dead without prior warning was ready. Not in 1968. No sir. Anyone who came to zombie flicks later . . . they just don't know how it felt. Romero never called his hordes of the undead zombies. And why would heup until that point, zombies were a specific supernatural creature from the voodoo culture. Not anymore. An entire generation of authors took the newly imagined undead of Romero's film and began to write. Almost 50 years later, Romero and Maberry have collected brand new stories set within the world of the film series, featuring such authors as Brian Keene, Mira Grant, Mike Carey, Carrie Ryan, and David Wellington. While all the stories are good, of particular note is Maberry's Lone Gunman, which Romero asked Maberry to write to officially connect his existing books to the movies. Taken as a whole, this book showcases the breadth of zombie literature, from the disturbing and the gross-out to the touching, thought-provoking, and even funny. This is a collection by masters at the top of their games, but it is also a tribute by fans to the man who inspired them to become writers. Order this volume immediately, if only to protect yourself from the hordes of readers who will be shambling in to request it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

May 22, 2017
In this somewhat overwhelming collection of zombie fiction, 20 authors return to the world first seen in Romero’s 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead, to explore the original zombie apocalypse in all its gory glory. Romero himself and the film’s cocreator, John A. Russo, both contribute, as do authors directly inspired by them and those who have further solidified and expanded the genre, such as Jonathan Maberry, Mira Grant, Chuck Wendig, Carrie Ryan, and Neal and Brenda Shusterman. The stories show zombies invading myriad settings—even outer space—and decades, from the 1960s to the present. With so many tales revolving around a specific theme, there’s a great deal of repetition in terms of mood and outcome, and the underlying theme of terror and despair can feel suffocating. As in the film, horrible things happen to good people and bad alike, and there’s plenty of visceral carnage (including a truly horrifying scene with a zombie baby in David J. Schow’s contribution). The anthology is the perfect homage to the zombie movie that started it all, but it lacks a fulfilling degree of variety. Agent: Sara Crowe, Pippin Properties.