The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark by Warren Wagner

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Ghoulish Books

Genre: Apocalypse/Disaster, Zombie

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Gay man author and main characters, main characters with AIDS

Content Warnings: Animal Death, Child Death, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Homophobia, Illness, Medical Procedure, Slurs, Suicide (Highlight to view)

Blurb:

In The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark, an HIV positive gay man must leave the relative safety of his cabin in the woods to brave the zombie apocalypse and find the medication he needs to stay alive.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

I was born during the beginning of the AIDS outbreak, during which my mom lost many of her gay friends. I remember the deep-rooted fear of AIDS that existed during my childhood. In grade school, we attended assemblies about the dangers of AIDS and how it was spread. There were public service ads about AIDS on every TV station. Parents wore red ribbons. As a queer teen I mourned the loss of an entire generation of gay and bisexual men.

One of the doctors I work with through my hospital, a gay man in his eighties who was one of the first physicians to treat AIDS patients, told me about the weekly funerals he attended. No one cared that gay men were dying of a mysterious illness during the conservative Regan administration. Little research was done on the epidemic. This doctor was one of the few who treated AIDS patients back then, using his knowledge of pharmacology to create a treatment regimen through off-label uses of already existing drugs. Of course, he couldn’t openly advertise his services due to the stigma in the medical community, so his patients found him through a whisper network and would visit him under the guise of getting a routine physical.

The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark is a unique zombie apocalypse novella about the AIDS epidemic. The cover of book is meant to invoke the iconic Silence=Death AIDS design from the late 1980s (a poster Quinton keeps in his Cabin). The title of the story comes from a quote in the play The Destiny of Me by writer and activist Larry Kramer, who is best known for co-founding the grassroots political group the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP).  In the first chapter of the book, Wagner references a New York Times article from July 3, 1981 entitled Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals. The article discusses an outbreak of Kaposi's Sarcoma in New York and San Francisco, a form of cancer that can form lesions on the skin and in the mouth. It wasn't yet known, but this sub-type of KS was caused by the immune suppression from some of the first HIV cases in the country.

Wagner’s zombie virus (if it even is a virus) is particularly terrifying because its victims, referred to as “The Afflicted,” are still awake and aware of what’s happening to them and powerless to stop it. They can feel themselves rotting and falling apart, even being eaten by flies. The zombies don’t want to hurt anyone but are completely unable to control their hunger, so they’ll scream warnings to their victims and plead for forgiveness as they tear them apart. Most disturbingly, they’ll beg uninfected humans to kill them. I suspect the Wagner’s zombies are loosely based on AIDS victims, as zombies are often an allegory for infectious disease. In her journal article Attack of the Living Dead Virus: The Metaphor of Contagious Disease in Zombie Movies English professor Cecilia Petretto explains that, “Much of our fear lies within the nature of disease itself… Disease, ugly as death, has its association with evil stemming back to the Black Plague.” What was known about AIDS was largely based on misconception, and AIDS victims were shunned and regarded as dangerous, much like the Hollywood zombies. In 1986, an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association about AIDS was entitled Night of the Living Dead II: Slow Virus Encephalopathies and AIDS. Dr. Arthur Fournier, who encountered his first AIDS patient in 1979 while working with Miami's Haitian community, compared the virus to "the zombie curse." Before the advent of active antiretroviral therapy (ART), an AIDS diagnosis was often a death sentence. In that way AIDS patients were like the living dead, dying but not truly dead as their bodies were slowly destroyed and they wasted away. Wagner even describes them as “Waiting for a cure. Waiting for the end. They weren’t dead yet, but they weren’t alive either. They were zombies.”

From the New York Historical Society

Kept alive for 26 years by his antiretroviral medication, Quinton is one of the few humans who survived the zombie apocalypse--survived being the operative word, as he’s not really living, just surviving. He’s all but given up on love and compassion or anything ever getting better. His love for his deceased boyfriend, Frankie, brought him so much pain he’s now become a gruff loner. It’s safe to say Quinton may also be suffering from survivor’s guilt, as both he and his boyfriend were HIV positive but he survived while Frankie died. Worse, Frankie died when Quinton wasn’t there. The story switches between Quinton’s memories of Frankie’s last days and the present.

While out scavenging for more antiretroviral, Quinton meets Billy, a fellow gay man who’s managed to survive the apocalypse and is also HIV positive. But while Quinton has become cold, Billy still openly cares for others, which Quinton sees as a liability. Billy also believes in working together and the importance of community, while Quinton prefers to avoid other people. We learn that one of the reasons Billy has stayed alive so long is because those who are HIV positive are immune to the zombie virus. I thought this was an interesting twist, as outside of The Last of Us, Cooties, and Blood Quantum I’ve never seen a human with a natural immunity to Zombies in media. AIDS ravages the immune system, yet for some reason protects Quinton and Billy from turning into Afflicted. Being the kind of person who reads science articles about theoretical zombie biology, I did want to know how it all worked, but honestly an explanation isn’t important to the narrative.  

I had a few nitpicks when it came to Billy, a Black character. While he was written well, “Black” was not capitalized when describing him. When referring to race, Black should always be capitalized. Billy was also described as having dreadlocks. As far as I know Billy was not a Rastafarian, therefore his hairstyle should be referred to as locs, not dreadlocks. While these examples are relatively minor issues, it does highlight the importance of doing your research and using sensitivity readers when writing about groups different than your own.

Wagner’s writing is very spartan; there are no grandiloquent descriptions or deep introspections. Instead, he gets his point across without the need for flowery adjectives or metaphors. The only part where this proved an issue for me was when it came to Quinton and Billy’s relationship, which felt very rushed. Otherwise, I appreciated Wagner’s straight-to-the-point style. It’s not often we get a new take on Zombies, but Wagner’s Afflicted managed to add a whole new level of horror to the undead. The history of AIDS is seamlessly interwoven, never forced, throughout the narrative. Wagner uses horror fiction to not only educate readers in a way that feels natural and respectful, but to capture the feelings of despair no doubt felt by many during the AIDS epidemic. The message is clear. Having AIDS may feel bleak, and every day is a fight for survival, but even amongst all the horror there is always love and hope.

(UN) Bury your Gays by Clinton W. Waters

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Self Published

Genre: Body Horror, Eldritch, Sci-Fi,  Zombie

Audience: Y/A

Diversity: Gay author and characters

Content Warnings: Alcohol Abuse, Animal Death, Bullying, Cannibalism, Child Abuse, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Death, Forced Captivity, Homophobia, Kidnapping, Medical Procedures, Physical Abuse, Slurs, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence (Highlight to view)

Blurb:

It's the late 2000's. Humphrey West and his best friend Danny are just trying to survive their senior year. Unfortunately, Danny falls short of that goal after a risky rendezvous. But Humphrey has just the thing: a concoction borne of magic and science that is able to bring the dead back to life (at least it's worked on a bee so far). Against all odds, Danny comes back from the clutches of death. The Danny that returns is...different. And it's not just the missing memories. Soon, Humphrey is doing everything in his power to keep his friend alive, but none the wiser to what is happening. A queering of the Lovecraft classic "Herbert West - Reanimator", (UN)Bury Your Gays is about blurring the boundaries between life and death, love and obsession, and secrets and lies.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Considering what a raging bigot H.P. Lovecraft was, it’s always delightful when one of his works is reclaimed by marginalized creators, because you just know it would drive him absolutely batty. On top of being racist, sexist, xenophobic, and antisemitic, Lovecraft was also a homophobe. He discouraged his close friend, a gay man named Robert Hayward Barlow, from writing homoerotic fiction, and his letters condemned homosexuality (though it’s unclear if Lovecraft ever knew the man he appointed as the executor of his literary estate was gay). However, some literary critics speculate that Lovecraft was himself secretly gay or asexual. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a homophobe would be overcompensating for a sexuality they were secretly ashamed of. It would certainly explain the strangely close friendship between one of Lovecraft’s most popular characters, Herbert West, and the unnamed narrator in Herbert West: Reanimator. Perhaps Lovecraft subconsciously created a male-male relationship that he himself desired.

The original story was first serialized in the pulp magazine Home Brew in 1922 and told the story of Herbert West and his loyal assistant, two medical students at Miskatonic University who experiment with reviving the dead. Their experiments are less than successful as the reanimated corpses become violent and animalistic; one even devours a child. The two share a close relationship, choosing to live together for years, even though the assistant admits to being terrified of his friend. The movie Re-Animator (1985) and its sequel Bride of Re-Animator (1990) furthers the gay subtext between the movie’s main characters Herbert West (Jeffery Combs) and Dan Cain (Bruce Abbot), with West often acting like a jealous lover to Dan. The homoerotic reading of the first two Re-Animator movies is apparently so popular it has over 500 fanfics shipping the two on Archive of our Own.  

(Un) Bury Your Gays is “a queering” of Herbert West: Reanimator that also draws inspiration from the films. (For example, the chemical solution in Waters’ story has a green glow, a movie-specific detail.) The title is a reference both to subverting the Bury Your Gays trope and to the plot itself where a gay character is brought back from the dead and literally “unburied.” The novella tells the story of Herbert West’s great-nephew Humphrey West, and his best friend, Danny Moreland (who takes over the role of the assistant and whose name is a reference to Dan Cain). Danny and Humphrey are best friends, and the only two queer kids in their religious, rural town. While they do love each other, it’s purely platonic and the two aren’t in a romantic relationship. Humphrey remains single while Danny secretly hooks up with the captain of the football team, Judd Thomas, who also happens to be the son of the town pastor and Humphrey’s biggest bully.The trouble starts when Humphrey discovers his great-uncle’s notebook detailing the secret to life after death. Humphrey attempts to use the reanimator solution to bring a dead bee back to life, with the hope that he can somehow use it to fight colony collapse disorder. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions and the solution soon leads to death and the destruction of Danny and Humphrey’s friendship.

Waters does an excellent job mimicking Lovecraft’s original story, both in tone and content, while also making it uniquely his own. Initially appearing to be a sensitive kid, Humphrey is eventually revealed to be every bit as complex as his great-uncle. His desire for revenge causes him to make morally questionable choices, which he rationalizes as trying to protect his best friend. He comes off as cold to others (much like Herbert West), even though he feels things deeply.  It's an interesting twist to have the reanimator narrate the story, rather than his assistant. We get to hear firsthand what’s going through the mind of the mad scientist, making Humphrey a much more sympathetic character. He clearly loves Danny, and will do anything to protect him, but he takes it too far and becomes obsessive and controlling without even realizing it. When things go too far, Humphrey doesn’t show remorse-- much to Danny’s horror. But all Humphrey wants is to keep his friend safe. He genuinely thinks he’s doing the right thing and can’t comprehend why Danny gets upset with him and eventually cuts him out of his life. And because Humphrey’s character is sympathetic, and we know how he feels and thinks, I honestly felt bad for him. It’s a compassion I can’t conjure for either the original Herbert West or the film version, both of whom, while not necessarily evil, are definitely on the lower end of the morality scale.

Overall Water’s queer retelling/sequel to Herbert West: Reanimator is an excellently written, morally gray horror that’s sure to please Lovecraft fans.

Crescentville Haunting by M.N. Bennet

Formats: Digital

Publisher: Self published

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting, Monster, Occult, Romance, Vampire, Werewolf, Zombie

Audience: Y/A

Diversity: Bisexual main character, non-binary minor character, Black major-character

Content Warnings: Child Death, Child Endangerment, Death, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Medical Torture/Abuse, Mental Illness, Oppression, Police Harassment, Torture, Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Violence (Highlight to view)

Blurb:

Determined to pass junior year, Logan won’t let Henry distract him—much. Logan’s focusing on all things human, which means his swoony vampire ex-boyfriend will have to file his own fangs for a change. When he goes to the school bonfire and runs into Henry, wandering into the woods seems like a great escape. Until he’s bitten by a wicked Crone with some twisted magical munchies. Logan is certain his ex-free human future is done when he’s dragged off to a scientific institution for study. There, he’s presented with an opportunity to keep his life, family, and future. All he has to do is stick to human ideology, since all things paranormal are illegal. But complications arise when the Crone begins to haunt him and Logan realizes that if he wants to get his life back, he has to navigate his lingering feelings for Henry. With the Crone set on devouring him and the institution ready to obliterate him for any missteps, Logan must decide between pursuing the human future his family wants—one that he thought he wanted too—or the chance to embrace Henry, even if the world isn’t ready.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Logan just wants a safe, normal, drama-free junior year, and that means avoiding his vampire ex, Henry, at all costs. Which is easier said than done. Logan may be shy and awkward, but Henry is his complete opposite: confident, outgoing, and suave. When his best friend Kiera (a phantom) drags him to a bonfire party that’s supposed to help Logan relax, he discovers that trouble has a way of following him. Not only is Henry there, but Logan is attacked (for the second time since he first started dating Henry) by a powerful creature, this time a monstrous witch known as the “Crone.” After sustaining a bite from the Crone, Henry’s life changes forever.

Henry and Kiera are known as Vices, a group of monsters including phantoms, witches, vampires, trolls, sirens, and werewolves that are forced to live in the shadows due to public fear and draconian laws. The Crone is a sin, a powerful Vice that feeds on other Vices and can turn humans into undead monstrosities called Hauntings (think zombies and ghouls) with a single bite. After Henry’s attack he’s whisked away by SPU agents (the special police force in charge of catching and neutralizing Sins) to a secure facility designed to treat Hauntings, but to everyone’s surprise he doesn’t transform into a Haunting. It turns out Henry is a rare form of Vice, known as a Viceling, more human than Vice. The lore of Crescentville Haunting can get confusing in places, and there’s a lot of backstory. So much so that I actually checked to see if there was a prequel I had missed. But it’s no worse that any other fantasy novel with rich world building. If you can remember the rules of Quidditch, you can remember the magical classification system Bennet has created.

The characters are relatable and their voices sound authentic. The romance is steamy without being explicit and felt age appropriate for younger teens. It should be noted that while the book contains a paranormal romance, it’s not the central theme of the story. Instead, we focus on Logan’s struggles with his new identity and trying to fit into a human-centric world-- an analogy for trying to fit into a heteronormative society when you’re LGBTQIA+. In Monsters in the closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film Harry M. Benshoff writes “monster is to ‘normality’ as homosexual is to heterosexual.” LGBTQIA+ scholars have long equated queerness with fictional monsters and stories like Crescentville Haunting reclaim the “monstrous queer.” In Bennett’s story, the “homosexual vampire” is the hero rather than the villain, with the humans representing an oppressive heteronormative society and the facility attempting to “cure” Logan of his monstrousness a metaphor for conversion therapy. In addition to romance, the book also has plenty of horror, violence, and suspense, all courtesy of the Crone who continues to haunt Logan after the initial attack.

Overall, this was a fun read with a good world building, a cute relationship, and teens who actually sounded and acted like teens.

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Formats: Print, audio, digital

Publisher: Tor Nightfire

Genre: Apocalypse/Disaster, Monster

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Trans author and characters, queer characters, Native character

Takes Place in: North Eastern US

Content Warnings: Animal Death, Body Shaming, Cannibalism,  Child Death, Childbirth, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Eating Disorder, Forced Captivity, Gore, Illness, Kidnapping, Medical Procedures, Oppression, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Harm, Slurs, Torture, Transphobia, Verbal/Emotional Abuse,  Violence (Highlight to view)

Blurb:

Y: The Last Man meets The Girl With All the Gifts in Gretchen Felker-Martin's Manhunt, an explosive post-apocalyptic novel that follows trans women and men on a grotesque journey of survival. Beth and Fran spend their days traveling the ravaged New England coast, hunting feral men and harvesting their organs in a gruesome effort to ensure they'll never face the same fate. Robbie lives by his gun and one hard-learned motto: other people aren't safe. After a brutal accident entwines the three of them, this found family of survivors must navigate murderous TERFs, a sociopathic billionaire bunker brat, and awkward relationship dynamics―all while outrunning packs of feral men, and their own demons. Manhunt is a timely, powerful response to every gender-based apocalypse story that failed to consider the existence of transgender and non-binary people, from a powerful new voice in horror.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Have you ever wondered what happens to trans people in sex-based apocalypses like those in Y: The Last Man or Ōoku: The Inner Chambers? Gretchen Felker-Martin sets out to answer exactly that in her post-apocalypse splatterpunk novel Manhunt.

The T-rex virus transforms anyone with high levels of testosterone—mostly cis-men—into cannibalistic, sex-crazed monsters. Emboldened by the end of the world, a group of TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical “feminists”) have formed their own militia where they hunt and kill any trans women they find. It may seem like a group of militant TERFs is an exaggeration, but it feels like less of a stretch when you consider there’s already a high rate of violence against trans people. In 2021 alone, at least 56 trans and gender non-conforming people were murdered in the US. Transphobic hate crimes have quadrupled over the last five years in the UK. These fake feminists are also more fascist adjacent than they’d like to admit. As Judith Butler accurately pointed out, TERFs “have allied with rightwing attacks on gender” and “The anti-gender ideology is one of the dominant strains of fascism in our times. So, the TERFs will not be part of the contemporary struggle against fascism.” TERFs Lily Cade and Bev Jo Von Dohre have even called for the death of trans women. The fact that trans women in Manhunt can transform into monsters if they don’t have access to anti-androgen medication gives the TERFs exactly the excuse they’ve been waiting for to go from hateful rhetoric to actually destroying that which they hate most (never mind that cis-women with PCOS or congenital adrenal hyperplasia can also transform into feral beasts).

Not only do trans women have to avoid getting killed by the monstrous men, but also running into the militant TERFs who have seized control of most of the northeast. Fran and Beth are two such transwomen trying to survive in the new world, catching feral men and harvesting their testicles for their friend Indy to extract estradiol from. After running afoul of a militant group of TERFs and almost being killed by men, Fran and Beth meet a sharp-shooting trans man named Robbie, who they take on their journey with them. The trio return to Indy’s house with their testicle trophies where they learn she’s been offered a job by a spoiled rich girl who controls a luxurious bunker. But the promises of comfort the bunker offers may hide a deadly truth.

While I personally enjoyed this book, it won’t be for everyone. It is splatterpunk, after all. That means there’s lots of brutal violence (including a cis woman having her uterus cut out of her), gross content (testicle eating), and graphic sex. Everyone in Manhunt is super horny, sometimes at wildly inappropriate times, so Beth, Fran, Indy, and Robbie do a lot of fucking. The sex is hot, sometimes gross, and other times both hot and gross, much like real sex. It was nice to have sex scenes centered around trans pleasure rather than the cis-male gaze. Of course, the graphic description of genitalia might be triggering for some people who experience gender dysphoria, so be aware of that. Speaking of hot sex, a captain in the TERF army named Ramona is sleeping with a non-binary prostitute named Feather. One reviewer claimed this is unrealistic but I have to disagree. A lot of chasers are happy to sleep with trans people but won’t do anything to defend their rights or even stand up for them. Too many people with trans partners see their relationship as a shameful secret to be kept, and Ramona is no different. She’s too much of a coward to do the right thing and just goes along with the TERF army because it’s what’s easy.

Splatterpunk is very hit or miss for me, as many extreme horror books can cross over into misogynistic violence. Manhunt manages to avoid this trap, even though most of the book’s violence is against women (as all the characters, aside from Robbie, are women). Perhaps because it’s other women committing the violence, but I didn’t get that gross feeling I usually do when reading splatterpunk authored by cis men. Even the sexual assault scene didn’t feel gratuitous and was handled well. I also loved how flawed the protagonists are. Some people mistakenly assume LGBTQIA+ characters need to be perfect for it to be considered a “good” portrayal. I believe realistic is preferable to perfect, and I like my queer characters to have character flaws who sometimes do and say problematic things. Both Beth and Fran feel very human. Beth is reckless and insecure; Fran has both passing and class privilege and can sometimes be selfish. Neither of them are bad people, just realistically flawed.

My only complaint about the book (and granted, it’s minor) is that there are so many descriptions of Indi’s fat body. The way she’s described isn’t quite fatphobic, but it did make me feel uncomfortable that there was so much focus on it. I can understand that Indy is dealing with a lot of internalized fatphobia and insecurity, so it makes sense that her character would spend a lot of time focusing on her size and the limitations that come with it. When the story is told from a third-person point of view, there’s no reason for Indy’s weight to be described in such detail, especially since no one else’s body gets that much description or scrutiny. At least she’s never described as gross or unattractive, and Indi even gets to be sexually desirable, which is rare for fat characters outside of fetish porn. It was refreshing to see fat people having passionate sex scenes just like their skinny counterparts. Like I said, it’s a minor complaint and could absolutely be my own hypersensitivity.

Reading this book is like having your brain put in a blender. It's wild, gross, horny, disgusting, tragic, and hilarious all whipped together into an extreme horror smoothie. In other words, I LOVED it. You have to be at least somewhat familiar with trans culture to fully appreciate the story, which I thought was awesome. There's also just something extremely satisfying about trans women killing fascist TERFs: not something I'd advocate in real life, but it's fun and cathartic in fiction. Unsurprisingly, this made a bunch of real-life TERFs very angry. They didn’t like being portrayed as bigoted assholes just because of their bigoted asshole-ish behavior and tried to review bomb Manhunt…which should just make you want to read it more. 

Shutter by Courtney Alameda

Formats - Print, digital

Publisher: Square Fish Books

Genre: Monster, Ghosts/Haunting, Zombie, Vampires, Blood & Guts, Thriller, Horror, Romance

Audience: Y/A

Tags: POC (Love interest is part Aboriginal Islander, author is Latina), Disability (PTSD)

Takes Place in: California, USA

Content Warnings: Violence, Gore, Child Death, Physical Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Child Abuse, Sexism, Sexual Harassment/Assault, Torture (Highlight to view)

Blurb:

Lock, stock, and lens, she's in for one hell of a week. Micheline Helsing is a tetrachromat-a girl who sees the auras of the undead in a prismatic spectrum. As one of the last descendants of the Van Helsing lineage, she has trained since childhood to destroy monsters both corporeal and spiritual: the corporeal undead go down by the bullet, the spiritual undead by the lens. With an analog SLR camera as her best weapon, Micheline exorcises ghosts by capturing their spiritual energy on film. She's aided by her crew: Oliver, a techno-whiz and the boy who developed her camera's technology; Jude, who can predict death; and Ryder, the boy Micheline has known and loved forever. When a routine ghost hunt goes awry, Micheline and the boys are infected with a curse known as a soulchain. As the ghostly chains spread through their bodies, Micheline learns that if she doesn't exorcise her entity in seven days or less, she and her friends will die. Now pursued as a renegade agent by her monster-hunting father, Leonard Helsing, she must track and destroy an entity more powerful than anything she's faced before . . . or die trying. Shutter by Courtney Alameda is a thrilling horror story laced with an irresistible romance.

As a 90's kid, I grew up with some truly terrible action films. And I loved them. Mortal Kombat, Wild Wild West, and Total Recall are all proudly displayed on my DVD shelf. So I like to think I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to plots full of holes and cookie-cutter characters, as long as the story itself is fun and entertaining. Keeping that in mind, let's dive into Shutter, the literary equivalent of a bad action film.

We'll start with our four, action-cliché, main characters. We've got the leader of the good guys, complete with her obligatory tragic backstory, the tough guy who always has her back, the smart guy who's good with computers but not so great at fighting, and the wise cracking jackass who we're supposed to like but just comes off as sexist and irritating. They exist to spout "clever" quips at each other, provide exposition at awkward times, and act like bad asses.

Following a standard action movie formula, the hero decides to rush off on her own without backup, and gets suspended by the boss (who's also her abusive dad). But they go after the bad guy anyway because screw the rules, they're action heroes! Then there's lots of cool action scenes, explosions, some TRULY creepy shit, and a love story that gets shoehorned in there.

Okay, so the writing is "meh", the characters are kind of flat, and the story formulaic as hell, but was it at least exciting and entertaining?  Was their nail biting suspense and horror? I'll get to that in a minute. First, I need to address some major issues I had with story, the first being its heroine, Micheline.

No, Micheline, it's a French-Hebrew name that means "Close to God".

Micheline is a tetrachromat, able to see the invisible "ghost light" given off by the undead. As a direct descendant of Abraham Van Helsing, (because of course she is) she is sworn to protect the world from monsters, and captures and exorcises ghosts on her camera, à la Fatal Frame. Now, I'm going to give the author major props for making the lead a woman, something that doesn't happen often in the action genre (but is slowly becoming more common). So that's great. What's not so great is that Micheline has this really annoying habit of having to prove what a "Strong Female Character TM" she is by running head first into danger, then needing to be rescued by the guys. Apparently nothing says "bad ass" like poor decision making and being a damsel in distress.

Great teamwork there.

I can understand why she might want to prove herself; Micheline is struggling with PTSD and an abusive father, so it would make sense if the story was about her difficulty returning to active duty while suffering from flashbacks. Overcoming something like that is no easy task. But her trauma and strained relationship with her father seem to be their own separate thing, with little to nothing to do with her foolhardy, reckless, and selfish behavior. At least Micheline doesn't take her grief out on everyone else, like her jerk-ass dad, she just puts their lives in danger by keeping important information from them, making everything about her, and refusing to deal with her issues. So, basically a pretty awful leader. I also got this whole "I'm not like other girls, I'm a cool girl" vibe from Micheline. Throughout the book she kept putting down other women and/or viewing them as competition for her "boys", which was just sexist and gross. Basically, what could have been a cool, strong, female action hero was ruined by internalized sexism, bad decisions, and needing men to save her all the freaking time.

Another huge problem with Shutter was the flow of the action scenes. There is SO MUCH exposition and info dumping, and it keeps interrupting the suspenseful parts of the story. I mean, it's wonderful how much thought Alameda put into this world, and I was certainly interested in the science behind monster hunting, but I don't want to read a full page about how a camera works right when Micheline is about to be killed by a ghost. It'd be like pausing the duel scene between Luke and Vader to give a five minute lecture on the technology behind lightsabers. It's cool and all, but really not the right time, and completely destroys the tension.

Forget the incredibly dramatic fight scene, let's learn about trichromsticism!

Okay, so now for the moment you've been waiting for, was it at least entertaining? Heck yeah it was! The overall story was great, suspenseful, and fun, with some truly terrifying scenes. By the time I got to the second half of the book, I couldn't put it down! The monsters were incredibly creative and creepy, like something out of Silent Hill, and the horror scenes were spot on. Alameda does an excellent job of building suspense and creating a creepy atmosphere (minus the random info dumps that kill the mood). It's worth pointing out that this is the author's debut novel, so it's understandable that the book has flaws. Even the great Terry Pratchett's early work was, admittedly, not that great, and he's one of my favorite authors! So Alameda definitely has time to hone her skills and improve on her characterization and exposition. She's already great at world building, horror, and action scenes. And honestly, it's nice to see a horror novel written by a Latina author. The genre is severely lacking in Latinx, Chicanx, and Hispanic writers, and the few I know of are mostly men. 

Overall, Shutter is a fun, suspenseful read, even with its flaws. If I could just take out the annoying characters, and focus on the plot, the monsters, and the fight scenes, the book would be perfect, like a horror survival game. That's actually not a bad idea, it could be a cross between Fatal Frame and Resident Evil, where you can just explore abandoned buildings and fight monsters instead of listening to pointless dialogue. At least in a video game I can skip random info dumps. 

I just imagine all annoying video game tutorials as being done by either Navi or the Microsoft Paperclip.

Everything I Know About Zombies I Learned in Kindergarten by Kevin Wayne Williams

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: Mott Haven Books

Genre: Apocalypse/Disaster, Blood & Guts, Zombie

Audience: Adult

Diversity: Black/African American/Caribbean American characters, Trinidad, Jamacian, Hispanic/Latinx characters

Takes Place in: New York City, USA

Content Warnings: Abelism, Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Body Shaming, Bullying, Cannibalism, Child Death, Child Endangerment, Death, Drug Use/Abuse, Forced Captivity, Gore,  Medical Procedures, Miscarriage, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Slurs, Suicide, Violence (Highlight to view)

Blurb:

Finalist for Foreword Reviews' IndieFab Novel of the Year for Multicultural fiction and Horror. Even before the apocalypse, nine-year-old Letitia Johnson's life had never been simple. Shuttled from foster home to foster home in the impoverished neighborhood of Mott Haven, it was all she could do to keep track of her little sister. When the apocalypse came, she tried to keep her sister's kindergarten safe by locking them all in a tiny school bathroom, hiding while they waited for a rescue that never came. For five days, they hid. They hid while their teachers were being eaten, while their classmates were being killed. They hid while the Bronx was being evacuated. Now, there's no one left to help them. There's no place left to hide. It's just her, one ax, twelve kindergarteners, twelve garden stakes, and a will to live. While the cast of this novel is primarily children, the book is intended for adults and contains material unsuitable for younger readers.

When it comes to horror, kids come in two types. Either they're sweet, innocent, completely helpless victims the protagonist needs to protect at all costs, or they're evil little bastards that will send you into the cornfield, control you with their telepathic powers, or just straight up murder you because they're the spawn ofSatan. The children in Everything I Know About Zombies I Learned in Kindergarten somehow land right dab in the middle of the victim/villain scale. They're neither helpless nor innocent after being forced to go through things no child should go through, nor are they actively malicious, only killing for survival. They also don't seem to possess the immunity to handle situations that most children do in horror stories. Kids get eaten by Zombies, shot, torn apart, and baby zombies get spiked in the head. So if you can't stomach minors getting killed in fiction, I recommend staying far, far away from this book.

 Letitia, the nine-year-old protagonist, is easily the most competent, clever, and practical character in the book, organizing her little sister's kindergartners into a unit of efficient zombie killers and quickly picking up survival skills. Growing up with a drug addicted mom, Letitia is used to taking charge and picking up adults' slack, in addition to becoming wary of the world at a young age. In the early chapters, they try to look for the childrens' parents, eager to be rid of such a heavy responsibility, only to discover their dickbag guardians all evacuated without them. (Who the hell just leaves their kid behind during a disaster? You'd think they'd at least make some effort to save them, damn.) The adult survivors actually pose more of a threat than the zombies (or cucos, as the children call them), their greed and despair claiming far more lives than the undead do. It's weird, even though the children are far from innocent, having become skilled killers, the adults are the ones who've become morally bankrupt. The few who do manage to hold on to their optimism and naivety don't last long, foolishly trusting the wrong people or refusing to admit the world, and the rules, have changed. The kids might be depressingly cynical and violent now, but they're merely adapting to their new reality, and are much more practical than their grown counterparts. It's no wonder the adults are so unnerved by them.



Some of the kids enjoy killing a little too much.

I was expecting the children being eaten by the undead to be the most disturbing part, until the book turned out to be about the death of innocence, and children being forced to adapt to a situation no child should ever go through. It's one thing to read about fantastical monsters like Zombies attacking a bunch of helpless kids, but quite another when they're dying from gun violence, or growing up in crushing poverty. In the first, the situation is pure fiction, no real child is ever going to be attacked by the undead, and you can feel safe in that knowledge. But it hits close to home when it comes to real world problems. Even if the children in the story are fictional, you know millions of real kids out there right now who are surrounded by abuse, violence, and probably living without basic necessities, and that's super depressing. So basically, it's a story about how kids with rough lives can't rely on adults (because they're either malicious, incompetent, or ignorant) and have to take charge of their own safety and survival, which probably would've ended up happening with or without undead hordes overtaking the city. I know zombie apocalypse stories are generally bleak, but damn.

 The zombies in the story are pretty much your typical Romero zombies, slow-moving and stupid, and not too difficult to kill as long as there aren't a lot of them and their brains are destroyed, a feat which the children usually accomplish by stabbing them in the eye with garden stakes. Unfortunately, everyone becomes zombified upon death, regardless of how they die, so the undead multiply even if they can't bite anyone. Letitia quickly figures out that the zombies are attracted to movement and sound, and is smart enough to stick to quiet, secluded areas, while the adults continue to attract the undead with the buzz of their emergency generators and gun fire (because the adults are somehow less competent than grade schoolers, another reason Letitia avoids them).

 Unfortunately for me, most of the book is dedicated to the practically of surviving in an abandoned New York City, wandering around and looting mini-marts for supplies…which made for less than stimulating reading. I'm going to admit right now, I don't like camping or fishing, or any form of "roughing it," and I don't like reading about it, either. I'm pretty sure I'd die if I went for more than 40 minutes without WiFi.  So I've long ago accepted the fact that I would probably be the first person to die in a zombie apocalypse type situation due to my dependence on modern conveniences and comfort, and I'm okay with that. I'm sure some people will find all the survivor type stuff super interesting, as is evident from Discovery Channel's programming, but I was hoping for way more suspense and undead violence, and less foraging and guinea pig farming. Speaking of which, there's a decent amount of animal death too, apparently Zombies like to eat puppies as much as they like to eat little kids.



I would not last long in an Apocalypse, or even a dead zone. How did I even function back in the 80's? 

Stepping away from the story for a moment, I feel it's worth mentioning that while this book was a finalist for a multicultural fiction award, and has a very diverse cast, it was written by a white guy. Obviously, I prefer Own Voices books, but I've reviewed non-minority authors writing about minority characters on here before, and I probably wouldn't even be mentioning the author's race except for one thing that was bothering me. For the most part Williams does do a pretty decent job at representing a very racially diverse cast, and has clearly put a lot of effort into making the children's voices seem authentic. But the way the protagonist, Letitia, spoke came off as iffy to me, and I found myself side-eyeing like I always do when white people try to replicate the slang and speech patterns used by people of color within their communities. Now, it's totally possible Letitia is completely accurate to how Caribbean children speak, and I'm just super ignorant. It's just as possible Williams was trying to portray the way an average nine-year-old speaks, and Letitia's ethnicity had nothing to do with it. I mean, I have no idea what children are supposed to sound like, and my mom was a grammar obsessed English major so I probably sounded like an overly-formal weirdo at that age. (No one says "to whom are you referring" or "may I please", when they're in Kindergarten mom, GOD.) I honestly don't know, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave that distinction to someone more qualified. And if I am jumping to conclusions, well, blame it on all the racist pidgin I've heard spouted by characters like Long Duk Dong and the Crows from Dumbo (did you know the main crow's name is Jim? Damn, Disney...) over the years making me super wary.


Seriously, Jim Crow! WTF were you thinking Disney!?! At least they're not as bad as Sunflower from Fantasia.

Everything I Know About Zombies I Learned in Kindergarten definitely has flaws, most of the adults (and a few of the kids) get so little characterization it's hard to figure out who's who, the action scenes are confusing, and Williams spends way too much time on boring minutiae, but it's still an enjoyable read. The horror is less the gory, run away from the monster kind like I was expecting, and more a slow building horror at the nature of humanity and how adults kind of suck.