As a devoted fan of George A. Romero’s zombie movies, I eagerly dove into The Living Dead, hoping for a similar pulse-pounding thrill as his films. The book’s beginning absolutely delivered—Romero and Kraus bring the world to life (and death!) with that eerie, suspenseful grip we know so well. The opening act had me riveted, and I loved getting to know the characters as they navigated the terrifying first waves of the apocalypse. Each felt unique, and their motivations, flaws, and decisions were vividly fleshed out, true to the nuanced humanity Romero captures so well.

However, as the story progressed, I found the pace slowing considerably. While the characters remained compelling, much of the middle sections seemed overextended, with elements that felt like they could’ve been trimmed down. This contributed to a feeling of stagnation at times, which dampened some of the initial excitement. While the direction the plot took wasn’t my favorite, The Living Dead was still an engaging exploration of humanity through these well-crafted characters, despite the slower passages. For fans of Romero's horror, the novel is a fitting tribute, even if it lacks some of the urgency of his films.

The Living Dead is a masterpiece of a zombie novel. I love horror movies, games, and books, and this one was a wonderful mix of human and creep factor. The characters were amazing. I loved the inclusion of people from all different backgrounds, telling the story from different perspectives and giving it so much more depth. The story was impossible to put down and despite being a long book, absolutely held your attention. It was eerie and I loved how the book eased you into the zombies. It started with a whisper, not with a bang, but boy did it deliver! The Living Dead was scary, suspenseful, and so utterly beautiful, as all my favorite horror and zombie stories are. This was an absolute win, and I will recommend it for years to come.

Although at 656 pages, The Living Dead might seem a bit intimidating, believe me when I say every page will fly by. The story goes from zero to sixty in, like, 3.5.

I’ve been kind of over the whole zombie thing (with a few exceptions *ahem* The Night Eats the World *ahem*) since approximately season 2 of The Walking Dead. Yes, we get it. They’re dead, they’re all messed up (hahahahaha see what I did there? I crack me up). But before your panties become wadded, know that if it’s from the mind of, or set in the world of George Romero, I’m back in. So, I was actually really excited for this one. I mean, it was written primarily by Kraus (if my understanding is correct), but from notes and snippets that George had already compiled. In a way, it feels like George gave us one story of the dead who wouldn’t die from beyond this own death. It’s kind of beautiful, really.

If you’re looking for a tale that delves heavily into the why of things, this probably isn’t going to do it for you. But if lots of action interspersed with the very human feeling of “What the absolute hell is going on?” and “What did we do to deserve this,” I think you’ll be quite pleased.

Tonally, I thought it felt a lot like Dawn of the Dead. Like, this is a thing that happened, and we don’t like it at all, but now we need to get about the business of not dying ourselves. It has that sort of cynical vibe to it that Romero was able to channel into his work so beautifully. Like, we know damned good and well that no matter why this is happening, it is somehow related to the shitty way we humans have chosen to conduct ourselves out in the world.

But somehow, despite the deep feeling of cynicism, The Living Dead still manages to be a whole lot of fun. I guess what I’m trying to say is that this story is probably going to make you feel somethings. A whole bunch of them. And then you’ll probably want to spend some time after the story closes sitting with those feelings. I know I did. It made me think the way Romero’s work always has – so, good job Daniel Kraus!

I felt this book was a decent zombie read, but was looking for more to push it into a higher tier category for the genre. I think with the amount of zombie stories saturating the market it is hard to truly make a fresh spin on this type of story. The George Romero name, title, cover art, and synopsis are a draw for sure to long time fans of all things zombie.

However, I think this may have been part of the downfall with such large expectations to the classic that holds up better than some reboots. The writing and characters were certainly average to above average in my opinion but the size of the book was a bit hard to get through.

I think for most fans on the genre it will go over to satisfy the market. Unfortunately, I think the zombie era may be harder now given the pandemic but we will have to see if there is a reinvigoration soon.

Thanks to netgalley and the publishers for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review.

My interest in apocalyptic tales lies in examining the social/psychological reactions of the characters struggling to survive. This book certainly delivered in that area, while not sparing the violent (gory) aspects that make the zombie genre what it is. A little overlong and at times, too forcefully (repeatedly) driving home the underlying message of how we humans have screwed up…and will continue to do so. The many nods/homages to Romero’s legacy will thrill diehard fans. For me, this was just ok.

I wanted to so much love this book as a zombie genre lover, i found it frustrating at times. Pages and pages i felt padded out with what could have been wrote shorter. The book at times was a slog to read. In the end i had to DNF.

Romero is simply a genius. No one does zombies like Romero, except Daniel Kraus who manages to wrap this story up. It's seamless. It's hard to tell exactly what words were whose and I think that worked well for the novel.

Differing POVs are difficult for me, which was a downside of The Living Dead. It's just not my favorite writing style. With so many characters, I would find myself more interested in one over the other and annoyed to have to leave that character for another. Not to mention that all the interesting ones bit the dust in Act One. Speaking of that, the jumping timeline was also a surprise. It probably shouldn't have been. Act One was hands down the most interesting. Act Two had a lot of detail that was washed over, mentioned but not fleshed out. Act Three was challenging. I'm always going to be a fan of show over tell and while the wrap up might have been complete, it was also boring as all get out. .

I wasn't surprised at all to find that this book was quite philosophical and even had a bit of a narrative on climate change. After all, it's LONG and became quite the slog. While it did have a lot of detail to cover, I felt that a lot of it could have been minimized to make the reading less arduous. There is a lot of sociopolitical commentary that felt a bit like being hit over the head after a while. I also found it to have pretty stereotypical characterization and dissolved a bit too much into some of your standard tropes at times.

That's not to say that it's a bad read. It's a zombie book. I don't feel that anything new was really introduced to the genre, but if you love zombies or Romero, it's worth the experience.

I was given an ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.


I enjoyed reading The Living Dead. If you like zombie movies and zombie shows like The Walking Dead will you enjoy reading this book. It's scary and creepy and will keep you on the edge of your seat. And all-around zombie fans will like the story.

This book was fantastic! I would expect nothing less of George Romero and Daniel Kraus followed his lead wonderfully I fully recommend this book to any and everyone who is a fan of George or zombies in general!

I typically don’t enjoy zombie books much but when an opportunity to read George A. Romero’s The Living Dead, how could I ever pass it up?! Daniel Kraus did a phenomenal job at seamlessly blending both author’s storylines together and I honestly could not tell where Romero left off and Kraus began.

I truly loved the segments of the mind of a zombie and felt like that was something all other zombie books have ever offered. The characters were well-developed and at times over developed, and included all the elements of a good zombie apocalypse story, love, humanity, good versus evil, what extent people will go to in order to save themselves. Having said that, the book is immensely long. I do feel as though several sections could be left out without compromising the storyline but overall I really enjoyed it.

Thank you to Tor Books and Kaye Publicity for my finished copy for review consideration.

Thank you to the publisher for an early copy of The Living Dead by Daniel Kraus and George A. Romero. As a huge fan of George A. Romero’s zombie films, I was ecstatic to see that him and Daniel Kraus partnered up to write a zombie story!! It took me some time to read it and I gave it a 3.5 star rating. It was very enjoyable it was just very long and took me a couple of months to read it. I loved the diversity of the characters throughout, just near the middle I felt it was dragging a bit. I prefer the movies but really enjoyed how Daniel Kraus continued Romero’s legacy.

I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was suggested for the 2021 list. It was not nominated for the award. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at <a href="https://rusaupdate.org/2021/02/2021-reading-list-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/">

It feels like a long time since I last read a novel about the undead. I've read a few, but am by no means steeped in the mythology. (Nor have I ever seen one of Romero's zombie movies...)

THE LIVING DEAD is a substantial, engaging, and well-written modern take on the zombie genre/mythology. Told from multiple perspectives, readers get a sense of the collapse of society from a number of directions. The variety of settings, too, make each narrative thread distinct - for example, the spread of the zombie plague on an aircraft carrier. (For some reason, this made me think of the movie adaptation of World War Z...)

If you're a fan of the genre, then you should absolutely check this out. Recommended.

DNF really looking forward to this but as it was an early draft,there were to many spelling mistakes and in some parts unreadable.
Awaiting the paperback.

I am still thinking up the more detailed review to leave on my blog, goodreads and amazon, but I wanted to give some quick feedback here. I loved the first half of this book. It was amazing. It really does feel like finally Romero gets to tell the story the way it always should have been told. The second half of the book is good as well, but having both in one book was just very difficult and long to get through. It would have felt easier to manage if it had been multiple books. One big book was a little daunting of a challenge. Another problem I had was that it was just so many characters. Again, if it had been in separated books, it might have been easier to follow along? As it is now, I have had a few moments where I felt lost because I wasn't sure who this character was. It is a truely amazing book though and even with the few complaints I have, I still feel this is a 4+ to 5 star rating of a book. I could not tell where Romero left off and Kraus added. It was a seamless blend of the two authors and it was really impressive. This is a really epic book and a must for any Romero zombie fan.

Any fan of the horror genre, even if you're not familiar with Romero's work (which I greatly am), will get a few mind0occupied days from this read and is certainly not a book anyone needs to miss out on.

Have to be honest. Didn’t love it. A tad bloated and pretentious. Some good gore and when it moved it moved well. But if you are really into zombies, I’m sure you’ll overlook these faults and enjoy the book. It’s Romero for God’s sake.

Who better to write a zombie book than George Romero- the master of zombie tales. This story introduces elements of zombies not previously seen- animals turning into zombies, lots of ethnically diverse characters- into the mix. I loved the beginning of the book. The backstories of people are far more detailed than we are used to getting in horror stories, helping you really understand and care for the characters. We skip ahead 12 years into the story and find out where they are now, how they have been living (or not living). Having overcome so much in settling a town, one wants to see the book end gracefully- maybe people learn to live together and realize what they have overcome. Instead the book takes a turn for the weird(er). The zombies become revered members of the community. They have slowed down and are falling apart, and people befriend them, rather like less intelligent puppies. (The real puppies are all zombies, by the way.) There are hard struggles won, and lost pages later. This book left me feeling sad. What is the point? Why bother if everything is going to turn out badly? I was hoping for more from George Romero.

Results of a 51% read:

It's long. Really, really long, which is an interesting genre choice. As much as I go on about the value of zombie fiction, there's a limit to what can be drawn from it, and a limit to tolerance for immersion in the world where undead function. So, a serious strike against the book for no other reason than length, because sometimes more is just inefficient. Though I feel like that sounds petty, the reality is that we live in a busy world with many things competing for attention, and even if you are the almighty best at writing zombie fiction, a book that is 656 pages is going to turn off not only potential cross-genre readers, but fans with competing interests like jobs, family and walking the dogs.

The story is multi-threaded, and builds slowly enough for any fan. One thread follows a teenage girl who lives in a multicultural trailer park with her younger brother and her dad, while her mom is away in prison for drugs. One thread follows an African-American tv producer in Chicago, having second thoughts about his career. Another follows an aging Latino medical examiner and his younger assistant in Los Angeles. In yet another thread, a Japanese-American officer of a U.S. Navy ship stars to suspect something is going wrong. These are what I recall of the primary threads, and any one of them would be very rich. Romero gives each a fairly full arc before moving onto the next, which is somewhat satisfying. Because there is such a wide variety of settings, we get to see a wide variety of reactions to the rise of the undead, and the experience of adjusting to it, and then the survival skills, which will appeal to many fans.

However, Romero eventually does something different here--I think--which is (view spoiler) On the ship, our very likable protagonist finds himself the victim of a semi-internment camp situation, lead by 

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However, Romero eventually does something different here--I think--which is give some of the undead power to think, while others act more like ants with a hive mind. On the ship, our very likable protagonist finds himself the victim of a semi-internment camp situation, lead by and I started to feel very uncomfortable with the story. This was resistance, to be sure; but a very different kind. Likewise, over in Chicago, when the tv producer became undead and continued to do his job.  and I suspect that this played a small role in losing my momentum in the tale. No longer was it simple survival against the odds, or simple humans working out humanity. In fact, I couldn't work out where Romero was going with the plotting. Were zombies human too? Or hive minds with especially smart ones?  I wasn't sure I liked the developments.


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What really interrupted my momentum--and I'm not accusing, just analyzing--were the Black Lives Matter protests, which turned to riots in many cities. I was deeper into the story at this point, and as more people were undead, our L.A. characters were hiding out from both rioters and zombies, and parts of L.A. were burning around them. Add to this my own experiences in the Rodney King riots in L.A. in the 90s, and I reached my own personal bug-out point.

Add these things together: the length, the story direction, my PTSD, and it's unlikely I'll read another zombie book until COVID-19 pandemic is over. My apologies to both Romero and to NetGalley, as parts of it are, without doubt, exemplary for genre. But I would highly recommend considering reworking it for length, because at this point, it will be nothing more than a niche book.




Many thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for an arc of this book.

Not the genre-defining epic that I expected but it was quite good at times but bloated and boring in others. Overly long and with not enough 'new' to add to the zombie genre to feel fresh. I was excited to be finished with it.