I'm a huge fan of George A. Romero and was very excited to get a chance to read this book. The plot and storyline are very good, and this book gives you a great look at the overall timeline of all of the Living Dead films. Mr. Kraus did an excellent piecing together all of the notes and the few chapters that Romero left behind after his death. There are a lot of great action scenes that read like you are watching one of the films. That being said, there are parts that just seemed to drag on. It really bogged those parts of the story down some, and really made it feel like I was slogging through it. I also wanted to see what happened to The Face at the end after the story cut away from him when Muse King was dragged out. Otherwise, it was an enjoyable read.

I received a copy of this novel from net galley in exchange for an honest review. I am a huge Romero fan and love a good zombie horror movie and book and this felt like both only in book form. The writing was superb and made the characters as well as the story really come to life visually. I found myself wanting to take my time reading this as when I did sit down to read the pages flew by. All in all it was a fantastic read, one than any true zombie (or Ghoul) fan should pick up and read as soon as possible.

This book doesn't really work *as a novel* for me--Romero/Kraus are just not interesting enough sentence-by-sentence. As a description of the constantly evolving masterwork known as "What George Romero Would Have Done With Some Real Money"--a work we've also seen in the snapshot form of the original DAY OF THE DEAD screenplay--it's invaluable, if somewhat bittersweet, to have.

I was so thrilled to get an advance copy of this book from Netgalley. It was so good. I was surprised that I read this book in about 3 days because it's a huge book (over 600 pages). It tells different character stories and backgrounds. My least favorite character was Greer, she was too hard harded and made mistakes. The ending was way out there,but it makes you think about humankind and why we are the way we are. It doesn't paint us in a good light. This book is not for the squeamish because the zombies will do what zombies do. I highly recommend this big book.

I gave up for a bit on finding a good zombie read after a few too many permuted-press SUPERplausible endless weapon list/convenient super secret forces training books. Seriously - i got turned on to the genre through max brooks' world war z and thought "Wow - i love this" then have just been repeatedly let down since then.

The Living Dead is one of the most haunting things I've ever read. It kept me awake at night thinking about what the lead character endures. What if the world was suddenly infested with man-eating zombies and you had to find the one person who didn't want to be found? That's the set up of this thriller, and even though it takes a lot of twists and turns.

The scenes of carnage, zombie chaos, and so on, are described almost eloquently. Romero/Kraus is nothing if not a master of description - great chunks of this book are just description-with-action. Or action graphically, gorily, minutely, yet accurately described. I loved reading these sections. My fav. parts of any zombie (or horror) book are when people go off alone and wander through old buildings, hotels, trains, etc., and you never know who - or what - might spring up at you.

The Living Dead is flawless. Every emotion realistic, every action thrilling, every page perfectly written. I find myself unable to convey the magnitude of awe this book has inspired in me. It literally left me with my jaw hanging open on more than one occasion. Terrifying and amazing, The Living Dead will traumatize you in the way you always hope zombies would.

disclaimer: i received a copy of this book via macmillan-tor/forge in return for an honest review.

i really like zombies. all kinds of zombies. slow ones, fast ones, scarily clever ones, mob ruled ones. i'm pretty happy playing in any zombie's yard and i've pretty much acclimated myself to the idea that there probably isn't anything really new in zombie territory.

into my to be read pile saunters 'the living dead' by george a. romero and daniel kraus. surprise! there are actually a few new things.

i wasn't aware of romero as an author except for screenplays and graphic novels. having an unfinished novel found after his passing is a zombie fan's dream. i didn't notice any changes in voice or pacing so their styles obviously meshed well. even the switches in narrative voice are handled well. second person narrative can be tricky; here, it's incredibly effective and lends a subtle increase to the tension already present.

the majority of the characters are rich and well-rounded. however, it feels like a few of them were there only to ensure representation of certain populations. some characters and plot lines were incredibly engaging and heartbreaking.

the story's time jumps can make things a little confusing for a paragraph or so even with time stamps. until you catch up with how time is flowing, character supplied context makes it easier to follow.

yes, these zombies are similar to other zombie iterations and the vehicle for transmission is something we've seen before. these are NOT your typical zombies, however. the reasons for behavior, both zombie and human, take an unexpected turn. in the end, 'the living dead' arrives at the point redemption always arrives - if we don't learn from the past, we're doomed to repeat it. this time the most important question is who will arrive there first.

four out of five stars

The beginning of this book was absolute perfection. The first characters introduced were well developed, diverse and likeable. As someone who enjoys body horror, I loved the initial setting inside the morgue. Those scenes felt very well researched because they were so vivid and detailed. Nothing in this book was particularly graphic, but there was a level of gore that just exists within zombie fiction.

Just to be clear, this is not a novalization, but rather a brand new story from the famous director. Regrettably, I was not able to watch Romero’s films before reading this book, but I certainly intend to check them out soon. This book felt very cinematic, which was not surprising given the authors' experience with the film industry.

Personally, I wanted more zombies. A lot of horror readers despise the zombie subgenre, but I love some good scenes involving the undead. The book was very character focused, which was generally fine. I just think there was room for more zombie appearances. There were numerous parts of the story that barely mentioned the zombie pandemic and I found myself searching for them on the page. There were a few chapters written from the perspective of the zombies, which I really enjoyed. Those narrative viewpoints were just so engaging and unique.

While I enjoyed a lot of aspects of this novel, I felt like it did not completely come together. As a co-authored book, I had no idea how the two authors' writing was combined. Certain sections, like the beginning and the zombie viewpoint chapters, really stood out, which made me wonder if they were the original material. The later sections of the book just felt a bit muddle and disorganized. This book was very long and I felt like it suffered from some meandering plots. The story was told from multiple perspectives and some were much more engaging than others.

So while I did not end up loving this one as much as I hoped, there was still a lot to appreciate. I would recommend this book primarily to those readers that enjoy epic horror books that incorporate multiple perspectives and storylines. This is the kind of zombie fiction that I would recommend to those that do not normally read the subgenre. Instead, this book is much more of a character-focused narrative, which happened to be told against the backdrop of a worldwide zombie pandemic.

Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book.

The Living Dead by George Romero is a great read! A real engrossing page-turner and worth the time of a read!!

I could not finish this title. I really tried. I was excited when I saw George Ramero was writing a zombie novel and I was thrilled beyond belief that I was able to get a copy via Netgalley.

I started this book mid-march. But by late march I had to stop. I just could not finish it during the COVID-19 pandemic. . So i'm calling it quits about 1/3rd of the way through or so. I may return to this book post COVID. But right now, I just am not in the right head space and the book felt all too real and dark

This is a credit to the writing and tone of the book. The writing is well done and evocative, you feel and experience the horror. Its very visceral. At times the pace dragged some, I think in an attempt to create tension or build suspense, but it mostly felt tedious. The pacing may have improved later in the book.

One thing that I think is both a plus and minus is the cast of characters. You experience the living dead through multiple points of view, ranging from sailors on a carrier to news anchors to a mortician to a young girl. Each of these characters brings different experiences and styles and have a distinct style that accompanies their sections. The abrupt changes can make things disorienting in some places and it can be hard to remember who is where or doing what. I assume all of these plot lines intersect later in the book. I liked most of the characters, but several are written to be inherently unlikable or disturbing. The scenes with the navy Chaplin were particularly horrendous.

Overall, an excellent horror book and I want to be able to finish it but I just can't. But it will be on our library shelf and I expect it to do well.
3 stars for now, not as a reflection of quality but just as a reflection of the fact that I did not finish it.
Thanks to Netgalley!

Like many other reviewers, for the last couple of years I have avoided zombie novels, mainly because over the last decade there has been just too many of them. However, the name of George A Romero was more than enough to entice me back into this popular sub-genre. No self-respecting horror fan could not be interested in a novel reportedly started by Romero many years ago which was substantially developed and completed by Daniel Kraus, who wrote the excellent YA horror thriller Rotters (2011) a novel I highly recommend.

The Living Dead concludes with fascinating endnotes from Kraus, who met Romero on a single occasion a decade before his death in 2017, painting a picture of a horror loving kid growing up worshipping the original trilogy and later delighted to have the chance to work with his idol. Kraus explains that even though The Living Dead starts with ‘Day 1’ Romero’s original idea was that the book should continue into the period beyond Day of the Dead (1985). Day of the Dead might have been the third film shot, but time sequence-wise, it is the last. The book takes in something akin to Night of the Living Dead, broadly portraying a worldwide zombie holocaust and a wide range of world catastrophes which occur in the following films and beyond.

This brings us to the first major problem, and it is a huge one, The Living Dead tries to do too much. Over the years I have read many zombie novels and the best examples are those which do not cover a worldwide holocaust, instead they focus on a few characters and very specific locations; Jonathan Maberry’s YA novel Rot and Ruin and Alden Bell’s Reapers are the Angels are outstanding examples. Moving away from books, The Walking Dead does the exact same thing, we never find out what is happening in Washington, London or anywhere else. This novel does the opposite by trying to be bigger than the competition and at 600-pages it was a major slog to finish and much too long. Perhaps Daniel Kraus was attempting to make a closing statement, some sort of literary conclusion to Romero’s career, if so, he misfired. Nor was it required, the three original films are Romero’s legacy, masterpieces which will live long on after this novel is completely forgotten.

If anything, Kraus plays too much respect to the original source material. In the 35 years since Day of the Dead was released there have been countless other zombie films and fiction and many are a lot better than this. It does nothing that has not been done a million times before; the zombies are so slow you could fall asleep in the repetitive ‘action’ sequences, such as in the opening in the morgue. This might have been fresh fourteen years ago before Max Brooks unleashed World War Z on the world and ultimately the name of George A Romero is just not enough to carry a book which is full of very familiar material.

I openly cried at the end of Alden Bell’s Reapers are the Angels, I could not have cared less what happened to the multitude of characters which come and go in the bloated 600-pages. Although it attempts to give the early stages of a zombie holocaust a very broad scope, in which the media are very slow to join the jots, all the different stories were disconnected, and I found them very uninvolving. It moves from the morgue where ‘Patient Zero’ reanimates, a trailer park, an aircraft carrier and an autistic federal employee charts the outbreak but has not got the skills to do anything about it. My favourite sequence was the one set in the cable news station which has the motto ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ and follows the outbreak through the reporters and eventually a surviving anchor who in the end does not know if anybody is watching. Another plotline concerning a rather unconventional crazy preacher who reads the zombie uprising in a way different from everybody else had its moments. The novel, however, should be applauded for its diversity, featuring characters from lots of cultural backgrounds.

Although Romero obviously contributed heavily to the developing story Kraus has written the majority of The Living Dead he drops a fascinating discussion in the endnotes regarding a much earlier version of the text. Apparently in the year 2000 Romero experimented with self-publishing on the internet and sold two chapters of a book directly to fans, where they would buy chapters directly from him. It is unknown whether he abandoned the project due to lack of interest or whether he got bored of it. The chapters have not been recovered however, Kraus does note that the anthology Nights of the Living Dead, which was edited by Jonathan Maberry and Romero included a rare fiction piece, which was an alternative first chapter to The Living Dead.

As the book progresses past the time period featured in Day of the Dead Daniel Kraus does try to throw in more new material, but it remains too reverential to Romero and I could not help thinking that this was a book that did not need writing. I’m sure it will have its fans and Romero purists may well purr over it, but for this reader it felt like a dead horse was being flogged.

Thank you to NetGalley & Macmillan - Tor/Forge for the ARC of this fantastic book.

While I enjoy watching zombie shows/movies, I don't normally read zombie books. I find that most of my intrigue with the topic lies in the makeup and costuming. However, when I saw George Romero's name on the cover, I knew this one would be different. Immediately, I found myself engulfed in his zombie world, and I couldn't stop reading! Daniel Kraus was the perfect partner to complete this work. His resume lends well to Romero's style and the two combined brings forth a work of epic scares.

This book is a lengthy read, but well worth it!! The story line is intelligent and well written. You'll find yourself on the edge of your seat, or covers over your head in no time, wondering what will happen next! I definitely recommend this book, even if zombies aren't your normal read.

4.5/5 stars (Note: the review will be live at the attached link on the date of the novel's publication.)

Zombies are one of my favorite horror story "monsters." There's something so haunting about a threat that is basically humanity but slightly... off. Zombies don't have a motive; there's no reason why they do the things they do. They simply operate off a basic needs-based system. They're the very definition of id: they need to feed and they need to feed now. There's something scary about a foe that looks exactly like us but cannot be reasoned with or stopped. But, all that aside, the most interesting thing about zombies is the way the stories that feature them force us to take a good look at ourselves. A common theme in most zombie stories is how the plague turns humanity into the real monsters. It's one of my favorite tropes of the genre and something I love to see various storytellers sink their teeth into. Nobody was better at this than George A. Romero. His films pioneered the modern zombie genre by focusing their lenses on the intimate human stories rather than the epic, action-packed survival stories we might see today. Romero seemed most interested in how individual people react to zombies rather than what, specifically, caused them or how they might be defeated. It's what made his films interesting and it's what makes his novel, The Living Dead (completed by Daniel Kraus after Romero's passing), interesting. The novel is more epic in scale than any of Romero's films but feels no less intimate than the best of his work. It's a brilliant achievement in the career of a man who had many brilliant achievements and it's quite possibly one of the best zombie novels I've ever read.

When I say The Living Dead is a superb book, I'm really not kidding. This book had me hooked from its very first page all the way to its final. The Living Dead is a long book, there's no getting around that, so the fact that the novel managed to hold me captivated for the entirety of its page count is a true success. It is certainly not a quick read, but it is a page-turner that Kraus and Romero have managed to make feel shorter than it is. Kraus and Romero are able to accomplish this by setting up a world the reader desperately wants to know more about and filling it with characters who are devilishly interesting to spend time with.

One of The Living Dead's biggest achievements is its excellent world-building. It's immediately clear how much thought Romero and Kraus put into the creation of this world. Everything is incredibly thought through - from the biggest events to the smallest details. And everything about the novel's world feels authentic. It would be accurate to say that The Living Dead takes place in the modern-day in a world much like our own, much like all of Romero's zombie films. There are news stations similar to those found in our world, presidents who are similar to those currently in power, and people who feel as real as anybody you could find on the street and who react to the novel's events much the way our current society is reacting to the COVID-19 crisis. There is a level of irony in the fact that this novel is being released the same year a major pandemic has swept the globe. There's obviously no way that Romero or Kraus could have predicted these real-world events, but reading the novel during these times certainly makes for an often surreal experience. But it also gives the book a sense of poignance that's even stronger than what it might have been at any other time. Romero had a gift for grounding his work in worlds that felt tactile and lived in and that remains true for what he and Kraus have crafted here.

It's impressive how well this world aligns with what Romero had already created in his films. It feels like there are so many stories that can be told within the world of The Living Dead and it's easy to imagine how, with a few tweaks, Romero's original films could slide easily into this world. Romero and Kraus continue exploring many of the themes Romero loved returning to in his films: namely ones like "how does humanity react to a crisis?" and "what makes humans different from the zombies?" These are both ideas that were heavily explored in Romero's films - and rank among the biggest reasons I enjoy those films as much as I do - and it's great to see them explored here once more. I'm a sucker for stories that tackle these kinds of themes and I really enjoyed The Living Dead's exploration of humanity. Its conclusion may have been bleaker than some would like, but it felt so real and so tangible and it was so effective.

If the novel's worldbuilding is a huge achievement, then its character development is an even bigger one. Novels have an almost unique ability to bring their audience into the minds of the characters - far more than any other medium can do. And Romero and Kraus do a fantastic job bringing us into the minds of these characters. The Living Dead features a wealth of diverse characters - from all kinds of ethnicities, backgrounds, sexualities, and walks of life. There is a character for everyone in this book and all of them are given plenty to do and feel wholly developed as both characters and people. Everybody knows someone like at least one of the characters in the book and having that tangible connection to the main characters helps ground them - and the story, itself - in some semblance of reality. And having that sense of reality established makes the novel's turn into horror all the more effective.

The bulk of the novel's first half is spent introducing each of the main characters and how they're connected to this grander event. We get to know a bit about each of their lives before the zombie plague and then we get to see how each of their lives are uprooted and changed forever by these events. It's easy to track how they develop from the people they begin the novel as to the people they end the novel as and it's an utter joy getting to see them gradually change over the course of the story. Allowing readers the chance to get to know the characters before they're seismically changed by the zombie plague allows us to feel more sympathetic to their troubles. We can relate to them because we understand where they were when all of this began, so we're invested in how they get through this. Kraus and Romero clearly understood this and they utilize this tactic very well and to great results.

The novel does this really interesting thing where all of the scenes from a zombie's point of view are written in the second person - "You did this," "we want this," etc. The first time I read one of those scenes, I couldn't help but feel uncomfortable. It felt strange being lumped alongside the zombies, but I think it's actually really effective in hammering one of the novel's core themes home. Humans and zombies are not that different; we are Them and They are us. The novel suggests that humanity's knack for labeling a group of people as an Other, thus dehumanizing them and robbing them of their rights and liberty. So, it's really interesting seeing that same idea pointed at zombies - creatures who are traditionally depicted as less-than-human. The Living Dead isn't content with that depiction, though, and works really hard to humanize the zombies - through the use of second-person narration and sympathetic language. It serves as a great reminder that we're rarely different from those we try to Other and these moments in the novel rank among the best and most impactful.

As for the plot of the novel, it's honestly less important than the novel's other elements. It's not that there is no plot or anything, just that everything that happens in the novel are so tied in with the character's personal journeys - save for, maybe, the novel's climax - that it feels odd to think of it separate from the characters. While The Living Dead absolutely lives up to its promise to be this big, epic story that shows us the beginning of the plague all the way to the end, it's more concerned with displaying how individual people reacted during these events. It may take place over the course of more than a decade, but it's not a history book that exists to detail how the zombie plague started or how it ended; it's a story about the people who lived during the zombie plague. We learn all of these interesting things about the macro story while we spend time exploring the micro-story.

The novel starts off following numerous seemingly-disparate plot threads only to eventually combine them all into one climactic one. It's actually extremely impressive how well Kraus and Romero are able to execute that. You spend much of the book's first half wondering how on earth it could possibly tie all of these stories together and then it proceeds to successfully do so right before your eyes. While the ending is certainly not quite as good as the novel's beginning, it's still immensely satisfying and the last few chapters are a gut punch that has stuck with me in the week's since I've read the book. It's a great story told remarkably well.

If I had one complaint, it's actually that the book might need to be even longer than it is. There's a time jump in the middle of the story and, while I understand why Kraus included it, I feel it robs the final act of a bit of its weight. We've spent a huge chunk of the novel understanding the beginnings of the zombie plague and then we skip a sizable chunk of the middle of the zombie plague in order to get to the book's finale. While, strictly speaking, it might have been unnecessary, I still think it would have been nice to see a bit more of those years between the first and third acts. It would have been nice to see how all of these characters eventually came together, instead of just hearing about it.

One could argue that Romero's films fill in a lot of this gap, but that would only be half-true. None of the main characters from this book appear in any of Romero's films and it would take a bit of retconning for his films to fully fit within the timeline of this book. So, either way, we don't really get to follow the characters of this book during the years the novel glosses over. Plus there's a particular character who's rather important in the novel's final act who could have used a bit more development to make them fully land as a three-dimensional character instead of the archetype they feel currently exist as. All that said, though, this only ends up being a pretty minor problem as the book's climax re-hooks you into all that's going and explains enough about the missing years that you don't really end up minding this much. But it is a bit jarring, initially, and worth pointing out.

All in all, The Living Dead is one of the best zombie novels I've ever read. It's epic in every sense of the word. It's genuinely frightening, both in ways you expect and ways you don't. It's a long book, but it goes by quickly as you're sucked into the novel's world. All of the main characters feel fully fleshed out and Kraus and Romero do an excellent job of bouncing back and forth between them while retaining some kind of narrative flow for the novel. Everything moves very briskly while also taking its time to properly establish everything and luxuriate in some of its finer details. And, best of all, it holds a magnifying glass up to society, itself, critiquing the way we react to earth-shattering events (like a zombie plague). In these times, it feels particularly poignant. It's unfortunate to see how much our reaction to the COVID-19 virus parallels the initial reactions of those in the novel to the zombie plague. But, as with all good zombie stories, perhaps this examination of ourselves can prompt us into making some kind of positive change. Put simply, The Living Dead is an incredible achievement. It's immensely respectful to Romero's films, taking many of his ideas and examining them in the context of today's world. I can't say enough good things. I encourage all to read it upon its release.

My thanks to Macmillan/Tor Forge.
I honestly couldn't tell you where Romero left off and where Kraus began.
Thing is that this is a huge book. It's an extremely long story. I once thought at the beginning that me and this huge monstrosity would not get along! Boy, was I wrong! I expected zombie horror. I did get that. What I came away with though, is heart. Not undead heart..well, kind of that the too. I'm just talking about the one thing that I love most. I knew these characters. I knew where they were from, and I knew their lost loves, and their why's! Turns out that the why was pretty important. The Face is the one that I would have loved.
Its difficult to say anything about the end. I know that most would think some of it was inevitable. I am often bamboozled at how some authors think it may end. And, there are some scenes that feel true. That's just about the damndest thing of all! Humanity. Such a despicable bunch.
I did love how this story ended. We are me, a d me is you, and we are one.
This story touched my heart. Not something I was expecting, but, there you go.
Straight up, if you are expecting tons of zombies? There is a lot here. Expecting dodging and weaving? Nope. History. Hatred. Back stories? Yep! All the Zombies are there, but best of all? Yep, that IMHO is the people. Their stories and background. Man, I love that stuff..

I wouldn’t really classify this book as horror. It’s about the people and how they react and interact with each other. One interesting angle that I wasn’t too sure about at first was having several chapters from the zombies’ point of view. In the end, I thought it worked and helped humanize the zombies, which I think was the point. We’re all just people in the end. I wanted a tidier ending to the book but the ending was mostly satisfying.

Who doesn’t love Zombies? I certainly do and this book didn’t disappoint. A fresh new zombie book that will keep you reading late into the night and locking all your doors. Highly recommend!

4.5 stars.

I would imagine that finishing a book by Romero could be described as Herculean, at the very least. You've got to help broadcast Romero's style and his approach to zombie lore, all the while not seeming like you're just re-hashing modern iterations of the sub-genre. I imagine is this roughly a final entry for the legend, capping off a promise made long ago.

It's got the hallmarks of his great films: Scary yet contemplative, prophetic, indicting, cathartic, and not without moments of levity. It *feels* like it came from someone in a position of authority in horror, a cool-as-hell grandpa sitting you down to tell you a scary story when the parents aren't around. That weight comes from the creation of memorable characters, ones you feel connected to and battle-worn with as they wander through the years after the dead rise. Without their potent choices and reactions, this just ends up as an interesting (but slightly hollow) endeavor.

A few things on the downside: It could use a little trimming, and, this might seem a backhanded compliment, but Kraus often doesn't need so much backstory to accomplish the reader's affection for the character. I also often wondered during the read why so many non-zombie people had the pre-existing need to bite and eat others, even before they knew about the undead.

Major props for including Knoxville, Tennessee.

I'm not a subject matter expert on horror novels, and I've only ever read Max Brooks novels in terms of zombie literature, but I feel compelled to state that Kraus can rest easy if he is concerned about having delivered a book suitable for Romero's name on the front. I think the ending's something that will cause some discussion, but Kraus' afterward goes far in explaining many of his choices--consider it essential reading once you finish the main story.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for the advance read.

So, I really wanted to love this book, but I just didn't.
Don't get me wrong, it's written well and could've been great. Yet, it felt too long and I just wasn't feeling it.

I loved the beginning and I kept going. After a while, it just felt like all the regular zombie stuff. I do like zombies in books, movies, etc; but at this point I feel like it's getting boring. We've read and seen it all.

George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus brings forth a new novel where dead people quit staying dead and begin eating the living. Known by many names, Them, ghouls, biters and zombies, Romero and Kraus conceives brilliant intertwined storylines exploiting the infiltration of The Living Dead. Not holding back on creativity, gore and characterization definitely establishes many unpredictable tense moments for the reader. This extensive apocalyptic epic comes in at a whopping 650 pages that provide hours of bloody good zombie times.

The Living Dead is a sprawling, massive, and mostly entertaining read, but it's also a frustrating, nearly-700 page testament to just how little life -- and originality -- remains in the zombie genre. It's been more than 50 years since George A. Romero first shocked audiences with his then-highly controversial black and white movie, Night of the Living Dead, but after five additional movies, plus ten years of Robert Kirkman’s and AMC’s The Walking Dead and assorted spin-off television series (not to mention sixteen years worth of comics and a handful of video games), and countless other zombie flicks and books, including Brian Keene's uber-popular Bram Stoker Award-winning 2003 novel, The Rising and its spate of sequels, it's become abundantly clear that this particular horror niche is dead.

Yet, like the zombies themselves, this particular genre continues to lurch on, its tropes transgressing to cliche as the human survivors of these undead wastelands attempt to figure out all the things its audiences know all-too well by now. We know that as surely as you kill a vampire by staking it through the heart, you must kill the zombie by shooting it in the head. We're supposed to find suspense in characters fumbling their way into discovering all the rote genre trappings that have been ingrained in us for decades and suspend our disbelief enough to buy into a world where these characters have never even heard of a zombie. More likely, you'll be shouting at the book, demanding the characters to stop being stupid and shoot that shambling corpse in the head already! To the dozens of characters we follow in The Living Dead, everything that is new to them is an old, worn out hat to us, and not even Romero and Kraus can find much of a pulse in these discoveries as they work their way, in checklist fashion, from one worn out conceit to the next.

By forcing a reboot on the Romero legacy of the zombie outbreak, only scantly predating Night of the Living Dead, there's not much to be had in the way of originality or innovative ideas here. The characters and the contexts they're placed in are, at least, interesting enough, despite being overly familiar. If you're a regular reader of apocalyptic narratives or zombie books in general, you're likely to find these elements irritatingly familiar, and it almost becomes a bit of a guessing game to name off all the other books that have trod similar ground previously.

The Living Dead is divided into three acts. The bulk of Act One is relayed in mosaic fashion as we're introduced to a large number of disparate characters operating in their own disconnected environments. There's a pair of star-crossed morgue workers, the men and women of WNN broadcasting, the Navy crew operating aboard the floating island of an aircraft carrier, the Olympia, and a teenage girl who wakes up to find her trailer park neighbors in a sudden war against the undead.

Taking up more than half of the book's entire page count, Act One eventually devolves into a slog of familiarity as well-worn plot devices are repurposed and only occasionally given if not a face lift, then a minor bit of nip and tuck here and there. Act Two, blessedly, is much shorter and far more interesting as it condenses more than a decade of post-zombie apocalypse history into a handful of pages, moving us beyond the chronology of Romero’s films as depicted in Land of the Dead and Day of the Dead. Act Three takes us a full fifteen years into the future, with the survivors from the preceding acts attempting to establish a new civilization.

For as much as The Living Dead aggravated me, and too often left me yearning for other books to read despite being bound and determined to finish this damn epic, there were a number of high points to be found. Even if the parallels the authors’ attempt to draw between cell phones, social media, and zombification feel a bit too much like Old Man Yells At Clouds syndrome (and the simple fact that Stephen King already wrote that book with 2006’s Cell), their explorations of human nature and our place within the ecosystem, and their ruminations on the environment we all populate, were refreshingly thoughtful and welcome. I have no doubt, too, that a number of other readers will decry this hefty tome for being “too political,” outing themselves as a Johnny-come-lately to the works of George A. Romero, zombie fiction in general, and horror in particular. Make no mistake, it certainly is political, deliberately and keenly so. To me, this is a welcome aspect and plays a central role to the book’s theme. One character, Etta Hoffman, is responsible for cataloging the zombie apocalypse and recording the stories of these survivors, capturing the particular sentiments of a time and place, which just so happens to be the here and now, and good lord, is there ever a lot to say about present-day America, not all of it good or even particularly flattering nowadays. The racist and bigoted brigade of Red Hats among us will make plenty of hay over the number of minority characters that feature prominently throughout, and they will no doubt find plenty of other things to be ticked off about here, too, including copious amounts of shade thrown at their orange, small-handed Dear Leader. To that I can only say, good, fuck ‘em. I loved how openly and flagrantly political this book was, from its first pages right on through to its last.

While The Living Dead is much too long, and occasionally suffers for it, oftentimes feeling like an absolute slog to get through, much of its final act is an absolutely potent gut punch. There were moments that made me ache and left me feeling miserable, and I expect a number of other readers to be turned off by the darkly pessimistic detours Kraus takes these characters through. It is, however, a wholly fitting, and purely Romero-esque, finish that echoes the despair of the 1950 film that started us down this entire path. As a posthumous work, I can’t help but feel it’s ultimately a fitting and worthy eulogy to Romero’s films and reflections on society. I have little doubt that if Romero, who died in July 2017, had lived through these last few years of the Trump presidency, his finale to The Living Dead would echo Kraus’s finish in complete synchronicity. The end point, though, remains the same and its final message is certainly an appropriate one in these days of bitter political divides and tribal in-fighting. We all — each of us — need to do better, and be better. Otherwise, for now at least, the dead win.

I don’t know that this book was necessary.

I’m sort of bummed to say that. I mean, I love the idea of a tribute to Romero, and I did like many of the characters, but…

The beginning was terrific. I loved reading about how things started. But eventually, all the different story lines felt unsatisfying. I also wanted a bit more of a world view of what was happening.

Kraus is a skilled writer. There’s an autopsy scene that’s either the most horrific or most erotically charged thing I’ve read. And the fact that I don’t know which makes it even more horrifying.

But, aside from a few…zombie aberrations (?) that come later in the book, it’s pretty much standard zombie fare. It’s just zombie fare over decades of time.

I did like it. I just didn’t love it and I so wanted to.

*ARC Provided via Net Galley