Feed

Feed is a first person political thriller written in a time when zombies are a serious threat. Thirty years before the novel takes place two viruses-one that cured cancer and one that cured the common cold-combined into a highly contagious disease that turns its victims into mindless flesh chomping disease vectors.
The other bit of background required to drive the plot is that blogging has gone mainstream. When bioterrorists released the cure for the common cold and triggered the epidemic of walking dead, the mainstream media dropped the ball and bloggers picked it up.
The story is a first person narrative that follows a group of bloggers on the campaign trail as they report on a hot Presidential campaign. Things heat up when it is discovered that someone is intentionally infecting people with the zombie plague to effect the outcome of the campaign.
The main characters are well drawn and the plot moves along at a good pace. I had a hard time putting the book down. The author occasionally repeats information or spends too much time laying out background information, but that does not detract from the overall pace of the novel. Towards the middle of the novel a number of supporting characters are introduced that are never fleshed out enough. Since this is the first of a planned trilogy, I assume that they are important in the following books. (I have a general problem with a potboiler that is a planned trilogy. I think a good murder/conspiracy story should be able to fit into 500 pages. More than that allows for story destroying flab.)
For non-zombie fans the author does a good job of keeping the zombies in the background. They are just a part of the world in which the novel takes place. Their effect permeates the story as it permeates the lives of the characters. The gore is also kept to a minimum.
Aside from being a good read, Feed considers a lot of interesting questions. What unintended consequences will our quest for better health bring about? Is genetic engineering safe? What is happening to our news agencies? How would society change when being social can get you killed? Is righteousness bordering zealotry capable of good?
Overall, I recommend Feed as a good read.

Half Past Dead

When did zombies become props in erotica? I'm not sure I want to know the answer. It is just wrong. I think that romance/erotica should not be mixed with horror.
I found it painful to read, but if you are into romance/erotica, this book is a decent romance/erotica novel. It hits all the right conventions: strong woman, wounded and slightly and slightly dangerous man, sex, and marriage at the end. The sex is predictably steamy and surprisingly plentiful. The characters are young, attractive, and wildly fabulous. They talk like robots. But I guess beautiful people don't need wit.

Breathers: A Zombies Lament

It is pretty obvious that I'm a zombie fan, so this book piqued my interest when I saw it was available at the library. I was also a little afraid because it looked like it would be one of those social commentary, woe is me, weepy sort of books. It was that, but done in such a way to make it a fun zombie book as well.
S. G. Browne does an excellent job of making his zombie characters fully fleshed out. The narrator is just a regular guy who happens to have reanimated after his death. You can really feel the torment he goes through having lost his place in the world, but the narrative never slips into melodrama. Browne keeps things moving with snappy dialog and clever use of zombie folklore.
Using zombies also takes a little of the edge off of the truly terrible things that happen to the zombie cast. There is something funny about a zombie putting on make-up to fit in, or a zombie wearing a sign protesting that zombies are people too.
I hear they are making a movie out of the book. That usually scares me since it is hard to make most good books into films, but I think "Breathers" has a good shot of surviving the translation. The book is dialog and character driven, so a good scriptwriter should be able to make it work. The danger is having the movie slip off into camp or horror. "Breathers" is not horror.
I highly recommend this to both zombie and non-zombie fans. It has something for everyone.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

This is an interesting book to read. I liked the way it is presented as a series of conversations with survivors of the Zombie War. It presents a more diverse picture of how humans deal with the surreal and deadly. It allows the heroism, coldness, and frailty of the human condition seep through in its myriad combinations. The "South African" plan is as cold and as necessarily brutal as it gets.

I Am Legend

After seeing the movie, I decided to read the book. While I often find reading the book on which a movie is based ruins the movie for me, I did not find this to be the case with "I Am Legend." The movie and the book share little beyond the title, the name of the main character, and the basic premise. The plot, the deeper story, the actuals of the main character are all completely different.
The novel (novella really) is much darker than the movie. Robert Neville is not a super scientist soldier, he is just a regular guy, He is not searching for a cure; he is just trying to survive. In the end he doesn't find a cure, nor does he find an enclave of "survivors." Neville doesn't find god in the tattoo of a young woman. He finds a complicated comfort from a vampire. Humanity (at least as we define it) does not rule the day. In fact, humanity is ultimately redefined. Neville becomes the monster.
Matheson's writing is solid. Neville's character is well drawn. The plot rolls out smoothly using occasional flashbacks to fill in the gaps. The story is not a page turner the way Dan Brown novel is, but at 157 pages it does not need to be. The story and Neville's character are gripping enough to make it an easy read.
The book answers the questions about the vampire's humanity that movie does not. In fact, the movie cannot answer it because the answer complicates the clean ending. The book's answer is more realistic and in line with the "Living Dead" movies' progression.
If you like happy endings, see the movie and skip the book. If you are OK with endings that make you uncomfortable, read the book (and see the movie).