The Dead That Walk edited by Stephen Jones

ISBN: 1569757372
416 pages
published in 2010.

I’m not normally the sort of person that can open up an anthology of anything and read it straight through. However, I was pleasantly surprised by this volume (as was my boyfriend, who got to hear many of them outloud.) Although the book is actually quite slim, that is not to say that it isn’t high in content. Each story seems very carefully chosen and they are all (favorites aside) of a strangely high quality. Who knew there were so many writers with such talent writing about zombies? I think the really literary quality of a lot of the pieces in this collection is what really excited me. Some, of course, were stronger than others (and there were some that just seemed to come out of *nowhere* and at times made me uncomfortable — Haeckel’s Tale comes to mind, but of course we’re talking Clive Barker here — and although the content was a bit much for me, the writing was, of course, beautiful. Black Canaan [Robert E. Howard] was also a little too much, and it just didn’t seem to fit in with the theme of the rest of the stories. I’m not trashing it based solely on its racism because I understand the time period in which it was written, but that coupled with the fact that it seemed sort of out of place made it not do much for me.)

I think if I had to choose a favorite, it would be Amerikanski Dead at the Moscow Morgue [Kim Newman]. It was one of the longer pieces in the book, but the character development was incredible, and the atmosphere was striking and realistic despite the dreamy quality of the story. The writing itself was really admirable.

It made both of us want to look into more zombie anthologies. I ordered another one the other day that’s supposed to arrive at the house today [History Is Dead // Permuted Press]. I’m really looking forward. Zombies are by far my favorite movie monster, and I been consistently entertained by them on the page, too.

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