Well, I finally got round to reading Volume 2 of Lisa Richardson's zombie novels set in Folkestone. Again, I'm not a big fan of the whole zombie genre as they are on the whole a most improbable and quite dull monster. And yet again the second book was an enjoyable romp.
The reason for me reading the book was again more of an interest in fiction set in Folkestone, and being a horror genre fan was more secondary. The zombies themselves are almost superfluous to the plot in that the relentless stream of them and the sheer ease with which they are dispatched seem to be mere punctuations to the core plot. There seems to be more claw hammer or knife strikes to the head by the main protagonist of the novel than expletives in a 'South Park' movie. In fact by about the third chapter I was beginning to suffer from zombie fatigue. This is a splatter novel, so don't expect the political or social metaphors or satire from a George Romero film.
However, thankfully, the plot moves with pace and is actually concerned with a quasi-religious cult of humans as they attempt to murder surviving humans based on somewhat false-logic which is prevalent in so many ill-educated modern free churches - that the zombie apocalypse is God's punishment for human inadequacy.
The main characters are well written, but you can second guess the members of the 'good guys' that will get bitten by the zombies and have to be euthanised, by the fact that as secondary characters their back stories aren't as well fleshed out, or with the case of the annoying Amy, you are just routing for her death in the most unpleasant way possible! But then, even Stephen King sometimes gets criticised for somewhat perfunctory characterisation of minor players - and to be fair where do you draw the line? This is a 249 page novel not something clocking in over 1000 pages. If it were the pace would drop and I guess it wouldn't work as well. This is modern pulp fiction - and I mean that not in any derogatory sense but in an enjoyable guilty pleasure sense!
Put the brain into neutral, forget about Dickens and Shakespeare and go on an enjoyable journey around Folkestone in the company of Sophie and the undead...
Tuesday 27th January 2015
