THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

A so-called 'super flu' has spread across the entire globe and, even worse, has now mutated causing the dead to re-animate as flesh-hungry Zombies. The treatment facilities are quickly overwhelmed as those infected die and come back, spilling into the cities and causing untold chaos, increasing in number as they spread ever further, every victim coming back as one of them. Few survivors remain as civilization crumbles under the weight of the living dead. Pretty soon, scattered notes, collected by a single survivor, are the only signs left of a failing humanity.

MY VERDICT:

This book is described by the authors as an instance of "experimental storytelling" and I agree with statement wholeheartedly; there is no conventional story being told, no characters that develop, no central plot that pushes forward - it is a very divisive book that many will not like for the simple lack of anything narrative-related. I, however, do like it, simply because I was not wanting just-another story set in a Zombie apocalypse but something like this, a collection of notes from people who are actually living through that apocalypse, something that, while definitely fiction, is almost non-fiction in the way it is written. There are some notes that appear to be linked and many notes refer to the same refugee camp that became overrun and it is enjoyable to piece together relationships between each scribbling. It is true, some of the notes are fairly bland, minimal and a simple regurgitation of previous notes and some leave you wondering why any living person would ever write something like that or even, when they wrote it - past and present tense often becoming blurred. The book is not very long, you could easily finish it in just a few hours, resembling a comic book with a single picture of a note per page rather than any long-winded prose. So, while I do enjoy Dead Inside: Do Not Enter, and will give it my stamp of approval, the enjoyment you will get from it very much depends on your expectation - a regular story, this is not.