Isaac Marion
Random House
Otago Daily Times, December 18th 2010
Warm Bodies by first time author Isaac Marion is great fun. Zombies are a familiar staple of B-grade horror fiction (World Zombie Day is October 26th 2008), and one would expect that a novel told from the perspective of one would be, well, braindead. Luckily the narrator, R, is not your run-of-the-mill zombie. Sure he starts off normal; spending his time moaning, wandering around aimlessly (except when overcome by an insatiable need for food) and slowly decomposing. But even though he has no idea who he is, how he died, or why he became a zombie, somewhere inside his turgid brain he still has questions and dreams. And even he admits to an unusual facility for language; with difficulty he can string four syllables together.
One day on a hunting trip he bites into a freshly killed brain and in the few seconds during which his victim’s life flashes before him, he relives the first meeting with a girl called Julie. When he opens his eyes to see her staring terrified at him, he is overcome with an unaccountable desire to save her. Thus begins a love story that will not only change them both, but also offers hope to the slowly rotting Dead and to the dwindling pockets of the survivors slowly losing their own humanity behind walls and barricades.
R is one of the most believable and genuine characters I have encountered for a long time. A zombie and a gentleman, he is the perfect ambassador for the maligned and misunderstood beings so long parodied for the amusement of the Living. Marion may be writing from personal experience, but one mustn’t let prejudice get in the way. Alive or Dead, I thoroughly look forward to what he offers us next.
https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/offering-subsumed-exaltations-god
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