The Living Dead by George A. Romero and Daniel Krause is a great zombie epic! It’s scary as hell, in its graphic descriptions that make you see, smell, hear, and even taste the gore. The first 200 pages don’t read while eating please take my advice. This novel is so much more than just a gore fest, it there is heartbreak, love and betrayal. The Living Dead is a morale tale that ask what is living really? Is it a person going through the motions more glued to their phone than the real world? Or is it a Zombie that longs for a connection. This book is a huge 600 hundred pages, and I was entertained the whole time, the book went in directions I was not expecting, it kills more main character than I was expecting, which is a little fun and adds to the thrill that no one is safe. The first 400 pages are total zombie madness, the book jumps forward in time and deals with the aftermath of survival and attempting to live and be good people in the Zombie Apocalypse. This book is written by the grandaddy of the zombie genre, when he wrote and directed The Night of the Living Dead in 1968. He would continue making zombie movies until his death making such classics as Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead. The Living Dead was an unfinished screenplay that got turned into a novel by writer Daniel Krause. Krause is known for working with another writer/director named Guillermo del Toro he wrote the novelization of the Oscar winning film The Shape of Water and he is the co-creator of Trollhunters on Netflix, which I love so much. I was super excited when I received a copy for review thanks to Netgalley and Macmillion Publishing. The Living Dead by George A Romero and Daniel Krause was published on August 4th 2020.

The Plot: A statistical analyst sees a glitch in the system, which is the start of a full blown Zombie attack. Two forensic pathologists make the horrifying discovery that the dead rise as they are doing an examination, and tweet out head shots are the only way to kill. Crew members on the aircraft carrier Olympia try to survive a zombie out break in the middle of the ocean. We get a first hand experience at a zombie attack at a trailer park, and we get to experience a news team making the tough call of what exactly to report. All face life and limb to survive without being bit and become part of the living dead?

What I Liked: The descriptions and sounds will paint a vivid picture in your mind that you will not be able to soon forget. The characters are plenty about the same amount as Steven Kings The Stand, and they are all so well defined that I knew exactly who they were, and liked almost every one of them. The body count was so high and unexpected deaths kept me on pins and needles. The bad guy, I kept imaging as a clone to Robert Blake’s character in David Lynch’s Lost Highway. The writing is really great and it balances horror to morality really well. I’m really sad this is going to be the last collaboration between Romero and Krause. Hopefully a lost script is found somewhere.

What I Disliked: The ending was a great idea, but after the first three fourths was so awesome, I have to admit I was a little letdown. I wanted it to be bigger, and epic like the start.

Recommendations: I totally recommend this epic tale of zombie horror from the master of undead fiction George A. Romero. This book has every gross gore-tastic description you could ever want in a zombie story. The characters are diverse and all over the spectrum of people. If you are looking for raw zombie horror then you will get it, and if you are looking for a morality tale then you will get that too. This book has my full recommendation. I rated The Living Dead by George A Romero and Daniel Krause 5 out of 5 stars. It’s one of my top reads of books published this year.