The Living Dead doesn’t require much of a synopsis description if you’ve ever watched a George A Romero movie, but in short, it’s a book about zombies. We get to see the zombie apocalypse start and carry through over the course of many years, as the virus changes and the small group of survivors learn to adapt.

The Living Dead was a book I was really excited for, I’ve always been a fan of zombie movies and stories and the impacts it has societally, emotionally, and physically, on the characters throughout. I loved the start of this book, as we get introduced to the main characters, and where they were for their first interactions with the virus starting to spread. I also thought it was really interesting that every character had a different way of referring to the zombies - ghouls, sarcophages, and eventually zombies, it was a neat addition to see how different people would react to an unknown virus that causes the dead to rise.

My biggest problem with this book was the time jumps though. As much as I loved the start, it bounced between the different characters very quickly, and it wasn’t always clear how long had passed before we met back with previously met characters. As we get toward the end of the book, and all of the characters are starting to meet up and groups have been formed, you realize twelve years have passed. What I wanted from this book was what happened in those twelve years. There are brief summaries for each character, told through an interview process of what they encountered, but I found that section a bit clunky as well. We never know what questions were asked during the interview, so the responses given feel a bit awkward, and left up to your imagination, so the hardships that might have occurred during those twelve years really lose their power over the reader and the characters.

There was also a big philosophical question in the book, about the virus being created to end humans, that I found extremely interesting. I was disappointed when it wasn’t fully fleshed out, because of the time jump. While it is addressed at the ending a little bit, it didn’t have quite as much impact as when the character first brings up earlier in the book. It made the ending feel rushed, and I would have liked to have seen more of the characters looking into this question.

Overall, the book wasn’t bad, but it left me wanting a lot more from it. Which feels funny, because it wasn’t necessarily a short book. I think a lot of readers will still get a lot of enjoyment out of it, especially if they read zombie books for the gruesome scenes, but I found it a bit jumpy and it lacked a lot of the connection I would have liked for the characters because of the time jumps.

George A. Romero's mammoth unfinished zombie novel sees the light of day thanks to author Daniel Kraus - but is it worth the 650 page investment? That depends on how big of a Romero completist you are.
The novel, which chronicles a modern day zombie outbreak from a host of POVs, is a gory horror ride that starts with a bang and then falters to a slow shuffle (pardon the pun). Constructed along similar lines to Max Brook's World War Z, it suffers from an overload of characters - many of who quickly experience a grisly end - who lack the emotional connection needed to carry the story forward, at least in the first half of the book.
The opening autopsy scene in the morgue is everything you could hope for, tense, scary and oozing with rich characters you want to root for. From there, it begins to skip around a lot as new characters are introduced and things just start to fizzle.
There's enough of Romero's charm littered throughout to suggest a look. Whether you chose to stick around is another thing.

This book definitely surpassed my expectations. However I have to start with the negatives, because they were so glaring, especially with the reality facing us everyday in the streets of our cities. This book failed to commit to the "diversity" sprinkled in the synopsis on Goodreads. Spoiler alert: Only the cishetero white protags make it to the end. And the way our one surviving black heroine dies pages form the end, is just violent and horrible. For a big fan of Romero, and for a book that tried to be inspired by his films and books, this book did not incorporate his minority characters in any meaningful way and mostly in stereotypical ways. Also, our one disabled protag, is a cookie cutter stereotype of what it means to be autistic, devoid of emotion and computerlike. I still fell in love with this protag nonetheless. But that speaks more to the plot and story itself that managed to stay interesting and gave me WWZ feels (book not film). I loved the twists and turns, the shaping of culture as the ZA progressed. I even appreciated the way it made you fall in love with this huge cast, despite their VERY rough edges.
Also, the weird constant thoughts of vore, from the POV of humans, it was offputting.
This story itself I would give 4 stars, easily. But if you wanted a story where the black girl and Syrian refugee survive the ZA, check elsewhere.

Rating: 10/10

To put it plainly: The Living Dead blew me away. Authors George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus wrote it in a very smart way, mixing scenes of joy with scenes of pain; gore and beauty; love and hate. Hope and despair. The authors do not pull any punches or encourage the reader to look away; in fact, the reader is asked to lean into these aspects, to embrace the hurt no matter how raw. To accept the good, even when you know it is going to inevitably turn bad. I found this book to be a grab bag of sensations, and I loved every word of it.

What I like most about this book are the STORIES. They are so well done, in reading it I felt as though the authors just had all these personal stories they wanted to tell and putting them in a book where a zombie apocalypse is the backdrop was just the medium they chose to do that. The book follows 5 or 6 people or groups of people from inception, all the way to the end. Reading the genesis of the zombie takeover for each one, going through that first day with them, starts the reader off in a great spot because it creates buy-in for each character. The book puts the reader in a situation to care for the characters right off the bat. As they grow up, get older (in some cases get OLD), the reader experiences the characters’ trials and tribulations along with them, and so when the time comes for the story to end the investment is huge. I know that after 600+ pages of pure tension and emotional manipulation I was aching for a payoff. Hat tip to Kraus and Romero for writing a story that completely twisted me in knots, only to fix me just to screw me back up, again. I was a wreck by the end (and the beginning, if I am being honest), and that is attributable to the writing.

It is important that I mention I am not a horror expert. I have read some horror, but not enough to make any comparisons to classic zombie novels. Admittedly, this is also my first exposure to George A. Romero’s work. I am happy Daniel Kraus included a history of how the book came to be and the author’s involvement involvement with Romero’s unfinished project came (along with some information about Romero’s previous works). I mention this to say that my zombie experience is mostly limited to The Walking Dead (the television show, not the graphic novels [yet]), and so this is where my comparisons lie. TWD is one of my favorite shows, even as critical acclaim may have fallen off. I love the storytelling in the show, and as I mentioned previously, the storytelling in The Living Dead is top-notch. But that is where the comparison ends. The overall story of The Living Dead is much different from that of The Walking Dead, and for that I am thankful. As much as I enjoy TWD I am happy to have a different perspective on the zombie apocalypse. I was afraid this book would be a knock off of that story, but it is nothing of the sort. It is a completely different take.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the writing elements present in the book. The cast of characters is super diverse, which brought many different perspectives to this story that I enjoyed in particular. Obviously each character was written in a unique style, but that writing style would transfer over to overall writing in that chapter, as well, creating another level of diversity that continued to drive the story all the way through. There were times when the writing was smooth and poetic, others when it felt like a heavy-metal song, and everything in between. This constant change in writing style contributed to the overall tension and rawness of the book in a big way.

In sum, The Living Dead is absolutely fabulous. I loved following the characters’ stories, falling in love with them; sometimes being rewarded for allowing those feelings, other times being torn in two. I wondered if a zombie apocalypse is what we need right now, and Romero and Kraus have have shown that, at least for me, THIS is exactly the story I need at this moment. Highly recommended for fans of horror and zombie books in particular, and also anyone who is looking for a story to give them FEELS.

I'm always on the lookout for the next great zombie novel or movie/show. Sadly, there's a lot of crap among the good stuff. But this time, I found something really, really good.

I was super excited when I saw this book on Netgalley. To be honest, I didn't care as much that it had been "co-written" by George Romero. As far as I understood, he hadn't written that much when author Daniel Kraus took over the manuscript. But at the same time, having his name on this book sets high expectations.

This is a long book - it's a sweeping saga starting from when zombies first appear to decades afterwards and how things have changed and evolved. The story went in some familiar directions of the zombie genre (humans are awful) but there was so much that was original and I really enjoyed that. I did get some World War Z vibes in the beginning, especially as we went from story to story and perspective to perspective, but that's not to say that this was a copy of that by any means.

No matter how much of this was written by Romero vs. Kraus, or whether or not Kraus followed Romero's early vision (and he talks about that a lot in the 'co-author's note' section), this book is a solid addition to the zombie genre.

this book is big.. about 700 pages big which is long for most zombie books but i am so thankful for because i love zombie books. this book is written by the Zombie king himself George A romero and Daniel Kraus who has written with Guillermo Del Toro .. need i say more?
I was hooked from the beginning and someone mentioned it felt like reading archives from the future and it really did because you were following the paths of different characters and their stories. if you like horror and especially zombie horror this is a must read. thank you netgalley and publisher for letting me read this early

I was given a copy of this book for review purpose.

I enjoy reading zombie stories, the action and how the virus starts and ends. Most books follow the same path, virus arrives, government slow to respond and a few hero’s appear. In the Living Dead, the storyline is different. Yes, the zombies are here and we follow how the populace responds to the virus.

The detail given is not on the virus or zombies themselves but on the characters in the story. The book starts out with a few short stories, where we meet the characters that will grow larger as the book goes along. I found myself hearing and feeling for the characters of this book.

The zombies are there, not the main subject but not forgotten at all. This is how a zombie story should be written and enjoyed.

The Living Dead begins with two medical examiners and a dead body in the present day. As you can imagine in a Romero story, dead bodies don't normally stay dead.

The virus, documented by a lone autistic federal employee, spreads from a Midwestern trailer park to a U.S. air carrier in the ocean to a 24-hour news channel recording studio.

Tales from each overlap each other, building to a frenzied bloodbath across the nation. And we learn the undead are not the only monsters to fear.

The book then takes a massive time jump, and through flashbacks, we learn how some of the main characters have managed to make it to Toronto where they try to restablish some sort of civilization...a second chance at a peaceful life.

The Living Dead is a thrilling zombie epic, with really good character development (at least the lead characters). You grow to care about the lead characters and what happens to them.

There's a lot going on with the multiple story lines, but it still feels long at some points. At over 650 pages (according to my Kindle app), it could've lost maybe 100 pages and still been a great read.

I found the ending a bit depressing, but it wouldn't be a horror story if it had a happy ending, would it? And yes, there is plenty of gore, plus a bittersweet epilogue that ties up one loose end.

If you love Romero's work, or just a really good zombie story, you'll definitely want to add The Living Dead to your reading list. It's one I'll probably re-read at a later date.

My full review will post at Zengrrl.com the week before the book is available.

You may think you know where this is going. Romero invented the Zombie genre so it wouldn't be out of line for his Zombie novel (with Daniel Kraus) to suffer from John Carter Syndrome (Google it). However it does more then just thread easy, familiar ground. It goes in places that will get the water works running and dare I say, expire hope. It's also scary as hell, but you knew that.

If you're into zombies and action packed books, you'll love this book, although it's 600 pages, you'll still crave more!

Who doesn’t love a good zombie story? And George Romero?! The Legend himself. I didn’t notice where he left off and Kraus began. So well done!

This book has all the things I love most about zombie apocalypse novels - a good backstory/ reason for zombies, the crazy end of times, survival but most of all the people and the connections and community that rises up from the insanity.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for a review.

Well, as a person who is quite familiar with George Romeo's work I can tell that he certainly had a hand in this. Like other people, I can't tell where his writing and Daniel Kraus' ends and begins. I believe they are merged.

Anyway. With this book, it was odd. The details that the author(s) fixed on is odd. It was like, why does this matter? Why do we need to know this? It bothered me a lot during reading the book.

The gore was perfect - well done. The only problem is that the characters that these gore moments seemed to happen to - you didn't care about them. You get a couple chapters that focus on a certain set of people and then you move onto the next. You don't get a 'title' heading the chapters to let you know whose narrative you're still in.

All in all, I thought I was a fan of Romeo... but I guess I'm not that big of a fan to care.

I grew up watching George A. Romero's DEAD movies, and the subsequent adaptations/remakes of them. When I found out that a full length book was coming out in 2020, I immediately added it to my TBR. Huge thanks for the ARC, because I absolutely loved this one! I dove into it faster than a zombie diving into a pool of innards, and it kept me just as entrenched, too. The gore, the plot, the characters - it has everything! I did feel there were some problematic elements that maybe would benefit from a sensitivity reader on staff for editing, but overall, definitely a welcome entry to the genre.

I'm a long time fan of zombies and you can't get much more authentic than to read something written by George Romero himself so I was very excited to read this. That being said, I felt like the book could have been edited to be shorter. I'm not opposed to long books - a really amazing story can never be long enough - but I didn't think this particular story needed to be around the 700 page mark.

That being said, I really appreciated the way we got to follow the stories of so many different characters. I once read an anthology of zombie stories written in the Romero world and this reminded me of that in the sense that you got to see how different people would handle the looming zombie apocalypse.

The time jump helped with the length of the story and it led to an interesting conclusion (which I will not spoil here).

Overall it was an enjoyable story. I don't feel like there was anything particularly new or groundbreaking but that may be the nature of the genre (and I say that as someone who has a zombie novel planned, hopefully I can find some new twists as I go into my outline). Still, not everything needs to be brand new, not everything has to be a wild new take. Sometimes there is a comfort in the familiar and that sums up Romero perfectly - comfortable and familiar, as least as much as those terms can be used to describe the undead. ;)

Husband is reading and loving this book. Creepy and well written is his review. Thank you for the review copy.

Epic is what the jacket copy (and the book's sheer size) promise, and it's effectively what you get with the story as well in Daniel Kraus's completion of zombie film master George Romero's novel THE LIVING DEAD. We have a near panoramic view of a North America falling to the zombie plague, with multiple settings and characters we wouldn't often expect to see even in George's movies on this subject (many, if not most, being Not Cishet White Men, which is extraordinarily noteworthy). We have sociopolitical commentary both blatant and subtle. We have no small amount of zombie action to satisfy the gorehounds, some of which you'll have to read to believe.

So far so good. The sum of the novel's parts, meanwhile...is not quite equivalent to what you actually get from it in the end. The book is basically separated into two halves (with a long summary intermission that is much appreciated, because without it the book would be 4,000 pages long), and the first, pre-plague half is vastly superior to the latter, uncertainty-of-the-future half. I found it hard to understand why the survivors pressed on in the second half, even though they were literally telling me; it just seemed to fall flat. And bringing in a random conventional villain toward the end to create a climactic showdown in a book that didn't really need one seemed like, well, not something Romero would deign to do.

I will, ultimately, say this is worth reading for Romero's fans and most horror fans. It's by no means a "bad" book, and at times, Romero shows some real elegance of phrase that lets you know he could've thrived as a novelist. But it should not be anyone's entry point into the man's work.

This book is really kind of a mixed bag. There've been so many zombie books over the years that there's not a whole lot new that can be added, even from the grandfather of the genre himself. That said, there are some really good things in this book and it has a propulsive plot that hooks your interest and keeps you reading. In the early going, there are a number of vignettes, featuring a variety of different people in different situations, to give us kind of a wider range picture of the beginning of the zombie (ghoul) plague. These sections reminded me a lot of Max Brooks' World War Z. There's a mid-level officer on an aircraft carrier, dealing with the mundanity of everyday life aboard an enclosed environment, which is about to become exponentially worse. We've got a coroner and his assistant (who's secretly in love with him) who just may be at ground zero of the start of things. There's a somewhat withdrawn (is she autistic?) woman working in a federal government building, keeping careful records and avoiding contact with her co-workers. There's a group of newscasters in a CNN-like operation who decide to keep reporting as long as possible. And then there's the young woman who manages to escape from the hell of a trailer park in a small Missouri town when everything goes sideways. The story then proceeds to move between each of these scenarios for the next few hundred pages, before jumping ahead several years into the future. These various stories aren't bad, but they're nothing we haven't seen before in numerous other tales of the zombie apocalypse. What really stands out in the story for me were the sections set in the future, particularly the novel's closing sections, set in a utopian community in the ruins of Toronto, 15 years (I think that's the right number) after the onset of the apocalypse, when it is thought that perhaps fewer than 20,000 humans exist worldwide and the zombies have decayed to the point where they're not as much of a threat anymore. There was some really good stuff here, though it's marred by a pretty pessimistic ending. Lots of general philosophy about humanity and our flaws and how perhaps we deserve what we get. The book is certainly worth your time reading and I really found myself flying through what is a pretty long page count (over 700 on my Kindle), but I don't think it's the epic zombie novel that so many people wanted or were expecting it to be.

"The Living Dead" by George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus chronicles the beginning of the zombie apocalypse through multiple perspectives. There were many aspects of this story that I loved, and having the story told from multiple points of view was one of them. To list a couple of them, we get to see things through the eyes of two medical examiners, a crew aboard a Navy ship, and an adolescent woman brutally fighting her way through injustice (and a trailer park that has been overcome with zombies). I loved the writing! As a huge fan of horror, I loved the gore and I loved the fact that we also get to see things through the eyes of the zombies. We see firsthand how they are "created" and we also see their demise. There is a very human aspect to this story wherein the survivors have to think about the ethics of killing the things that used to be their friends and family. The story also touches on how technology, namely social media, can de-sensitize us to violence and to the many horrors that our world has to face. The apocalypse may save us from losing our humanity entirely, and this is an interesting aspect that I'm glad the authors wrote about. I'm also very glad that Romero's legacy will live on in this epic zombie tale. Kraus did a fantastic job of staying true to Romero's work while also lending bits of himself to the story. This book is a suspenseful page-turner that I had a very hard time putting down. The only reason I gave it four stars instead of five was because I felt that the ending went on a bit longer than it should have. Overall, I loved it, and you should definitely give it a read!

This review will also be posted onto my blog by May 9th 2020. Link will be added shortly.

I was given an advance digital copy of this by NetGalley and Macmillan - Tor / Forge. I was excited to jump into this one and the first 200 pages or so went by smooth. Eventually the snowball effect of characters happened and it seemed like to much. Just when a sequence of events was getting good the story jumped and you had to play catch up with previous characters. It felt very much like watching The Walking Dead on AMC.

That being said some of the writing created visuals that will stick with me for a while. Early on there is a scene in which the author makes reference of tendons being pulled tight like piano strings. Being a piano player I have that tuning vision in my head of how tight the strings can get and the noise they create when stretched. There’s another stinking visual with “My Sweet” and the Chaplain on the ship that makes your heart stop and then resume.

Past these areas it seemed more like the same old twist on zombies. There is nothing wrong with zombie stories but it could’ve been shorter than 700 pages. I wanted to read this because of George Romero, who wouldn’t? I also know that Daniel Kraus is a great writer. However following in Romero’s shoes I feel like this fell short. Honestly I think it would’ve for anyone that tried to finish it.

If you are into zombies then I say you definitely need to read this. Thanks again to NetGalley and Tor Books for the advance copy!

Happy reading!

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of The Living Dead.

I love zombies; zombie books, zombie movies, zombie graphic novels, and you're not a fan of zombies if you don't know the father of zombie movies, George Romero.

That's why I requested The Living Dead and was thrilled when it was approved.

As I began to read, though, I had conflicting feelings.

First, the writing is great; there's a diverse cast of likable, relatable characters and plenty of character development and concern and thoughtfulness has been put into nearly all the individuals.

Copious attention is given to the narrative and the world building as the world succumbs to the zombie pandemic and these disparate individuals deal with the onslaught and the end of the world.

Second, the POVs from the zombies was a nice touch. I both liked and disliked it because in my opinion, zombies are...well...dead so they don't have thoughts so their perspective is pointless.

Yet, I liked it because this viewpoint was different and I'm all for something new to shake up my reading.

Third, The Living Dead is as much about the zombies as it is about the survivors; it's about humanity and how we soldier on, very apt considering we are living through our own pandemic so art does mirror reality or is it the other way around.

I also liked the ending, which was symbolic and meaningful in a way I didn't expect the ending to be.

Yet, there were cons I couldn't ignore:

The Living Dead is long. And there are too many characters so I was unable to identify or connect with anyone. It was just a bit too much and I could see where Mr. Kraus' writing came in and where Mr. Romero's left off.

This isn't a story about zombies; its a story about humanity. And that's not a bad thing.

But, I was looking for more zombies, more Train to Busan instead of the second season of The Walking Dead, AKA The Farm.

Much of the narrative takes everything most people come to expect from a zombie apocalypse; about humanity starting over, about remembering our place in the world and how to start over, and packages them into a nearly 700 page tome, and it didn't really have to be this long.

The Living Dead was well-written and a primarily character driven novel.

If you're looking for a Train to Busan-like novel, watch Train to Busan instead and read this if you don't have anything to read on your flight to New Zealand.