Song of the Living Dead by Soren NarniaSummary
The zombies rose and walked, the country went mad, and then the zombies laid down again---all without committing a single act of violence. Song of the Living Dead is a satire and an elegy, a patchwork oral history of the strangest plague in world history. While scholars, politicians, and common citizens share their insights on this fictional madness, the restless dreamer Lionel tells his own story. Traveling randomly across the east with a group of close friends, he witnesses first-hand the nightmarish confusion that the living dead bring upon the land. It's a story of one man's despair over his country's inability to unite in crisis, a tale of sudden, random violence and illusions of America's greatness gone askew. When the zombies rise a second time and become anything but docile, the tale becomes even darker, as Lionel struggles to understand the design of a universe lost in the realm of B-horror movies--and more vivid real-life tragedies.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Before this book, I had never read a zombie book. What I expected out of a zombie book was the typical horror-story, scare-your-pants-off gorefest that every zombie movie I had ever heard of was. I was warned that this book was different, but I didn't imagine how different it could be.
Soren Narnia did a wonderful job on Song of the Living Dead. In the story, there has been a so-called zombie outbreak, though the zombies simply wake up to walk around and die again. There is no violence, no gore, nothing. The story itself is narrated by Lloyd, who is roaming the country with his band of nobodies, including his wife, a professor friend, a teenage girl who he is close to, and a man who has went AWOL from the military. Though there aren't many zombie sightings near the beginning, there are more and more until you reach the climax of the story, which features hundreds.
I have to admit that the twist at the end really through me for a loop. It was definitely unexpected, and shed a whole new light on the events that occurred through the story. Though it is a short book, it is definitely worth the time to read.
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