"The Living Dead: A New Novel" by George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus
A review:
I was greatly looking forward to this novel as I am a huge fan of Romero and his "Dead" Universe. Sadly, the story kind of falls apart in the last act.
The novel begins with the very first ghoul/zombie to rise: a John Doe in a Medical Examiner's autopsy room. This resets Romero's Universe to day one (again, previously done with Romero's first DTV entry in the series "Diary Of The Dead" in 2007) and follows various characters from their first encounters with the living dead through to the end of the zombie plague. The first 4/5s of the book are pretty standard Romero, full of social commentary (some taken to "beat you over the head" extremes by Kraus), paranoia and zombie action. The final fifth of the novel, sadly, mutates into a metaphysical lesson on what the undead have to teach us about love, acceptance and the human condition.
I bought this novel based on Romero's perceived participation. The story was that he had been writing this novel and it was unfinished when he sadly passed away and was completed by Daniel Kraus. If you read the afterward by Kraus, the truth is revealed: Romero had barely outlined his ideas and written a rough draft of the first 2 chapters. The remainder was created by Kraus (including rejecting ideas, story beats and characters from Romero's outline). This is far more Kraus' novel than Romero's. In a related note, when I began reading this the day before last, I had remarked to a friend that I was surprised how there was very little tonal change in the novel despite it having been written by two different authors. A similar posthumously completed and published book in the "Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy" series was pretty jarring as you could actually tell which parts were written by the late Douglas Adams and which were written by Eoin Colfer (Colfer could not hold a candle to Adams' humor or complexity). Now it is obvious why the writing had such a uniformity of style.
There are some good points:
Kraus does a great impression of Romero's storytelling style.
The characters in the novel are very authentic to what Romero did with the characters in his films.
There are references to many of the events and even characters from the films, giving us endings for them that we never got on film.
There are even references to a few of Romero's non-Living Dead films like "Monkey Shines: An Experiment In Terror" and "Knightriders", which are not forced and are nice easter eggs.
There are some interesting chapters from the point of view of the undead, giving a look into how they perceive the world (this was adapted from a little know Romero short story called "Outpost #5", which I need to hunt down and read).
There are events mentioned, some described in great detail, some just barely touched upon, that are unused concepts from "Dead" films Romero never got to make.
There are also some bad points:
As mentioned before, some of the social commentary goes beyond Romero's style and becomes too obvious and borders on obnoxious.
There are too many coincidental meetings to the point where some of the intersecting stories feel forced instead of an organic progression of the narrative.
The metaphysical stuff at the end (I won't spoil it for anyone that wants to read the novel) doesn't feel like what Romero would have done in his films, unless he had a major change in thinking towards the end of his life. The original scripted ending of "Day Of The Dead" had the zombie plague end when one of the main characters dies and simply doesn't rise again with no one knowing why but rejoicing as the nightmare that had destroyed human society was finally over.
The overall feeling of deception when you find out Romero barely had anything to do with the final product.
All in all, despite the deception in the marketing of the novel, I enjoyed revisiting Romero's Universe one last time. I enjoyed the characters, the overall plot, the looks into unmade films' stories but I was disappointed in the sappy metaphysical ending. I will not let that ruin the ride that got me to it though (Michael Crichton's novels usually fall apart at the end as well, so it is not a completely unexpected experience for me).
This is a long book (650+ pages including afterward and acknowledgements) but a breezy read. I finished it in roughly 9 hours spread across 3 days (the bulk of the reading was done on Sunday with only 2 hours on Saturday night and half an hour this morning to finish the last 45 or so pages).
