Zombiestan

Dhar, M. (2011). Zombiestan. New York: Severed Press.

Annotation: Taliban Zombies are infecting humans at an exponential rate and survivors must find a way to protect themselves and destroy the zombies.

Summary: Navy SEALs are on the alert in Afghanistan, seeking to eliminate Osama bin Laden's next in commands to prevent them from continuing their Jihad. While staking out an encampment they spot their targets and fire, unaware that the tent they are standing near contain a virus created from nuclear and biological weapons, which they'd planned to release on Western targets. When the tent explodes, the humans in the area are infected and become undead the next night. They retain the imprint of the Taliban and tie black turbans on their heads and moan, "Jihhaaad" as they attack their victims. The virus has spread quickly and overseas as soldiers who were unaware that they were infected are put on planes and sent to other locations. The zombies quickly begin evolving, sharing a collective consciousness and begin to work together to infect more people every night. A Navy SEAL, a teenage boy, an eldery professor who writes best selling romance novels under a pseudonym, and a young girl and her brother find each other and must figure out how to survive. When three year old Abhi is bit by a zombie and instead of dying survives with no effects the group realizes that he must have some sort of antibody to the virus and that if they can keep him safe and get him to a lab the human race just might have a chance of surviving.

Review: I don't have a lot of experience with zombie fiction, but this one seems different than most in the genre. I liked that the zombies were not just mindless, well- zombies, but that as time went on they learned and were able to work as a group, even sharing a collective consciousness. This made them much more formidable opponents, not that your garden variety of zombies are formidable enough! The romance between characters was realistic given the circumstances and all of the other characters were well fleshed out kept me interested. As with any zombie fiction you have to suspend belief, but the situations were convincing and I kept thinking "what if this happened?" while reading. There are some grammatical errors which make it apparent that this self-published book for Kindle was written by someone who is a non native speaker of English, but not so many as to detract from the readability of this book. Dhar is an author to watch out for.

Possible recommendations: Max Brooks

Rating: 2Q, 4P