Warm Bodies **1/2

By Isaac Marion.
Copy right 2011 by Isaac Marion.
Published by Atria Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, New York.

239 pages.

I'm not normally a reader of Science Fiction or Post Apocalyptic literature, and I am certainly not a reader of Zombie books.  Though I am a sucker for these genres in film, if the film makers do a half way decent job and and the movie's not too stupid.  I chose to read this  because it was an interesting title on Barnes & Noble Discovery Book series where I discovered it.

So yes, this is a book about Zombies.  But there is a twist.  it's from the point of view of one of the lesser deteriorated zombies.  I don't think this idea has ever been done before.  And it's funny because the lead zombie character has a particularly weird out look on life, such as you might call it.  It is a really funny book.  Apparently zombies have a fairly sceptical, fatalistic view on life. I would recommend this book on that basis alone. Simply that's it's really funny and a very quick read.

So I've already introduced our romantic lead, and yes it does have a romantic element.  His name is R ( he can't remember the rest of his name - just the initial sound - but that's more than most of his zombie comrades can do).  So he is intellectually superior to the majority of other zombies in his community at the deserted airport. 

One day, on a hunt, he kills and eats the brains of a boyfriend of a girl who later becomes his love interest.  Instead of killing her too, he saves her from another zombie for some reason, perhaps some glimmer of humanity that still exists inside of him.  He takes her back to his zombie bachelor pad (a deserted airplane)and convinces her in a series of one syllable words, gestures and grunts (he can think at a fairly high level but can't communicate very well - he IS a zombie after all!) that he won't hurt her and a strange sort of friendship begins.  He learns about her through his dreams and visions that he has as a result of eating her boyfriends brains and reliving the boyfriend's memories of his girl.  Apparently when a zombie eats the brains, they get visions of their victims memories and life.  His friend Zombie, M, likes to eat the brains of young women and states that it is like porno.  This is a little too disturbing even for our more sensitive, flesh-eating hero. He slowly starts to have actual feelings of empathy and sympathy.  He is starting to have human feelings.  Maybe he can change!  You think!?!?!?

The beginning of the book is probably the best part and most original part of the book.  Of course it's rather silly, which makes it the perfect beach read (did I just say that !?!?!)  And it does get hokey and into some rather unoriginal ideas as the story continues.  But it still good clean fun.  For example there are these "boneys" who seem to run the zombie community.  It's hinted that their evil is of a more ancient and sinister evil than that of the zombies who ignorantly stumble through their pseudo lives.  These boneys must be the reason for the "curse" that caused or is symptomatic of the Apocalypse.  There's a battle at the end against these boneys because the zombie , R, and his girl, Julie, are a symbol of hope to society of hopefully curing this disease or plague which has overcome earth.  It's a symbol of the change that the future could bring.  Of course there is the overdone, paint-by-numbers theme of the sins humanity has causing this mess in the first place.   But in my opinion those lofty philosophies about mankind are all throw away elements that should give way to the funny, original and silly narrative.

Here's a trailer for the book. They do them for books now!



And someone elses opinions and descriptions. Carefull - some language here.