The Living Dead - (Anthology)

★★★

This little anthology was fun to read.  Not all the stories gripped my attention, and I found myself eager to get to the next one while reading a few, but I think it's worth a read for any horror or zombie fan.  I decided to pick it up because I saw some authors I love on the cover of the book.  I, however, was a little disappointed with King's short story in this one; it wasn't my favorite. This book explores the many forms of zombies throughout history, and it was clear it gave each authors free rein as to which direction they'd take with the subject matter.  I'll touch on the stories I think are worth mentioning:

Dale Bailey - Death and Suffrage: This one took me by surprise.  It was a very political story about harmless zombies that rise from the grave in order to cast their vote for a certain political candidate.  Weird, I know.  Worth a read, though.

David J. Schow - Blossom:  I absolutely loved this one.  Perfectly written and short in length.  You understand what's going on from the very beginning of the story (one night stand + zombie reanimation).  Read this!

Nina Hoffman - The Third Dead Body:  This one was also worth mentioning.  The story starts out with a woman waking up dead next to another dead girl.  The woman is then revealed to be some sort of escort or prostitute and someone murdered her.  It had me hooked from the beginning.

Anita Blake - Those Who Seek Forgiveness:  A woman seeks out a person who can resurrect the dead in order to see her husband once more.  This one had an unexpected twist at the end that was satisfying to me.

George R.R. Martin - Meathouse Man:  This one was one of my absolute favorites.  Martin does a great job creating another world you can immerse yourself in, even in this short of a story.  The world he creates basically uses the bodies of resurrected dead to perform manual labor and also serve as sex slaves.  There's so much more to the story that's hard to describe without you reading it, which you should.

Nancy Kilpatrick - The Age of Sorrow:  This story is set in a world where the female narrator seems to be the only person alive for miles.  She's set up a home for herself and has tasks and a routine that works for her in order to shelter her from the undead.  The despair and loneliness she felt was scarier than the zombies outside, though.  I think that was the point.

Catherine Cheek - She's Taking Her Tits to the Grave:  A woman comes back from the dead and sets out to find the one who resurrected her, who she mistakenly thinks is her husband.  This story is fairly comical and entertained until the very end.


Anyway, those are just a handful of the stories that are included in this anthology.  I really did enjoy most of them, and I think it's worth a read for any lover of horror anthologies.  I am going to delve into more of these in the future couple of books I read.  I am pretty sure this one has a sequel, which I'll definitely be picking up soon.