George A. Romero invented the modern zombie with Night of the Living Dead, creating a monster that has become a key part of pop culture. Romero often felt hemmed in by the constraints of film-making. To tell the story of the rise of the zombies and the fall of humanity the way it should be told, Romero turned to fiction. Unfortunately, when he died, the story was incomplete.
Enter Daniel Kraus, co-author, with Guillermo del Toro, of the New York Times bestseller The Shape of Water (based on the Academy Award-winning movie) and Trollhunters (which became an Emmy Award-winning series), and author of The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch (an Entertainment Weekly Top 10 Book of the Year). A lifelong Romero fan, Kraus was honored to be asked, by Romero’s widow, to complete The Living Dead.
Set in the present day, The Living Dead is an entirely new tale, the story of the zombie plague as George A. Romero wanted to tell it.
I feel like there’s a bunch of different ways I could start this review & it’s making me freeze up a bit.
So up front I’ll just say that THE LIVING DEAD is one of the best books I’ve read in ages & just smashed its way onto my list of all-time favorite horror novels. I could not have loved this any more & between this, WHALEFALL, and THEY THREW US AWAY, Daniel Kraus has become one of my very favorite authors. And yes, of course this is a George A. Romero book as well. There’s an extremely lengthy afterword in the book by Kraus which sheds some light on how this book came to be. Some of the process remains a bit of a mystery, but it’s clear that while there was a lot to work with (from assorted chapters, short stories, notes, etc. left by Romero), much of this book’s 650 pages came from Kraus.
One thing that’s remarkably clear from the afterword is that Kraus is a George A. Romero superfan. I’d be lying if I said I was too, but I’ve seen Night, Dawn, and Day of the Living Dead a few times each, along with The Dark Half & Creepshow.
I had been kind of saving this book. Just one of those books that I’d look at & consider reading all the time, but just wanted to wait until it felt like the perfect time. It’s a door stopper but I was just really in the mood for an epic horror novel & THE LIVING DEAD absolutely delivered. Oof.
There are some nods to the films that I picked up on (and likely plenty that went right over my head), but this is 100% a standalone book. So even if you’ve never seen a Romero zombie movie, you could read this one no problem.
While the book is epic & the characters are deeply complex, the plot is exactly what you’d think it would be: the dead begin to rise, infrastructure begins to fail, and people try to survive, however they can.
I’m always super cautious of spoilers in my reviews & I’m trying to be extra mindful of that here. But one more thing about this book that I think really sealed the deal on this being something that I loved deeply: there’s a character death in this one that fucking ruined my mood. Wrecked an entire day. Like I was shaky & viscerally upset by it. I was angry at the book. I hated it for a little bit.
Which is of course a sign that I was really connecting with some of these characters. But goddamn, it hurt so much. It still does, to be honest.
I found the structure of the book to be kind of genius, while also a little frustrating (again, because of how drawn I was to certain characters). We’ll meet a character or a group of characters, and spend a pretty huge chunk of the book with them. And then move on to a whole other set of characters. But everything really gels in the end, you just have to stick with it (even if you’re missing your favs!)
The cast of characters is also wildly diverse & that feels incredibly important at this moment. “Night of the Living Dead” was deeply subversive for the time & overtly political, and that’s a huge element of this book. You can 100% tell that so much of this book was written during the first Trump term, so reading it early in his shitshow of a second term felt…horrifyingly timely.
I want to highlight a few of my favorite characters from the book. The cast of characters is pretty sizable & so I won’t get to everyone, but these folks made a big impression on me:
-Etta Hoffman is essentially the first character we meet. She works for the Vital Statistics Data Collection, a huge network that tracks all births & deaths in the United States. Hoffman was someone I was drawn to right away, but fair warning to readers: there’s a huge chunk of this book where we don’t see her at all. That said, her role in the story is absolutely incredible & the payoff on her arc is enormous. Hoffman kind of holes up in this huge office building as a sole-survivor type of character, for a really long time. She’s incredibly resourceful & just one of the more interesting characters in this book. She’s also neurodivergent, and I think having her feature this early in the book was a great indicator of how inclusive & diverse this cast was going to be.
-Charlene Rutkowski, better known as Charlie. She’s the assistant medical examiner to a character named Luis Acocella. Charlie & Luis take into their morgue the Patient Zero/John Doe who kicks off this whole zombie apocalypse. Even though you know it’s coming, the first scene of a dead person coming back to life is fucking chilling. I’ve seen & read a lot of zombie stuff in my life, but fucking hell…Romero & Kraus find new ways of making this seem way too real, and totally hellish. I think in many ways, Charlie is the heart of this entire novel. She’s certainly the most optimistic & hopeful character in a world desperately lacking in both.
-Jennifer Angelys Pagán is a Navy fighter pilot aboard the aircraft carrier Olympia. A massive portion of this book is set on this gargantuan boat, and it’s wildly impressive. We also meet Karl Nishimura here, who is one of the book’s main characters. The amount of detail that went into these sections is staggering. The entire book could have been set on the Olympia and it would have worked. So kudos to Daniel Kraus for all the research that clearly went into this portion of the novel. But wow, Jenny is someone I felt a real connection to. She goes through literal hell & back aboard the Olympia & she’s just about the most badass character in this whole book. LOVED JENNY SO MUCH!!
-Chuck Corso, better known as the Face. He’s kind of a himbo anchorman with nothing to lose & everything to prove. I can’t recall seeing a character on such a dramatic arc since Caul Shivers in Joe Abercrombie’s FIRST LAW books (if you know you know). I feel like the less said about the Face the better, but this is one of those true HOLY SHIT moments of character development. The man you meet in the beginning of the novel is not the same man at the end & it was astonishing.
I could go on & on about the characters, but I’ll leave it there. But oh! There’s a handful of chapters from the POV of literal zombies, wtf! This book goes a long way towards explaining the “zombie mentality,” for lack of a better term. Some really interesting concepts thrown into the mix!
I really loved everything about this. The scope of it all. The great cast of characters. The relentlessness. THE HEARTBREAK. This is a full-throated horror novel, too. THE LIVING DEAD is heavy on the gore, and Romero & Kraus find new and disgusting ways to terrify readers.
This is a really special book. One of my favorite reads of the year & one of my new all-time favorite horror novels!
Grimdark Dad 