Cover of Monster Island.
I was suffering from anomie earlier this week when I stumbled upon Monster Island thanks to a locked LiveJournal post.[1] Despite the fact you cannot read my friend's praise of Monster Island, I think it is still worth reading. Although the novel is for sale at Amazon, the author, David Wellington, decided to make it available online. While I was unlikely to purchase Wellington's book based on the short blurbs I had read about it, reading the entire thing (as opposed to just the first chapter, for instance) allowed me to appreciate the book. It even helped me jumpstart the process of overcoming my malaise.

Monster Island breaks normal "zombie art" conventions. Instead of taking place in a rural landscape, the island in the title is Manhattan, allowing the book's characters to outflank zombies by running down side streets and escaping into the subway. Wellington also introduces the concept of a "smart zombie," who have avoided the stupidity normally found in zombies by making sure that their brains continued to receive oxygen during their death. Add in reanimated bog bodies and Egyptian mummies, a boatload of child soldiers (from Somalia, now the world's most stable nation), and mix well. To describe Monster Island as a breath of fresh air would not be hyperbole. Since the book was published in print earlier this month, I think I will either buy it or throw some money at the author.

That said, I did not really like the ending, so I am glad that the second book in the trilogy of zombie books, Monster Nation, is actually a prequel, showing the spread of the zombie epidemic across the United States. I am currently in the middle of this work, so I do not have much to say about it yet.
--
[1] In retrospect, this seems exceedingly strange. Why not share these free resources with everyone?