REVIEW: The Zombie Survival Guide: How To Live Like A King After The Outbreak by Etienne DeForest
There are a LOT of Zombie Survival Guides coming out these days. I’ve gotten at least three in the past month. While not all of them are new, they are all new to me! One could rightfully say that Max Brooks started it all with his Zombie Survival Guide : Complete Protection from the Living Dead – you can’t say that he covered it all. While on the downside that could at first glance appear to be overkill. How could you possibly decide which survival guide is useful? Well while there are a lot of guides out currently, all of them have a different focus that they are trying to teach you. Etienne DeForest’s novel has one of the more interesting viewpoints as he brings in how to be that asshole that screws over everyone else for their own gain!
I really have to warn you on this one up front. You need to be able to enjoy completely off humor to love this book. I mean to want to be that guy who is a total asshole and screw everyone else over in the face of a zombie apocalypse you’d really have to be kind of a douche bag and this novel shows you the way! From racist to homophobic to sexist humor you pretty much run the gambit on ways to be an asshole and… it works.
I mean you can’t be someone who takes things seriously and enjoy this book. It just won’t work out for you in the slightest. Anyone who can’t take a bit of racy humor is going to read a few chapters of this and throw it out (possibly even burn it.) I however thought it was a good time, even by it claiming that Depeche Mode was the downfall of society falling into a Nazi created electronic dance fad to ruin society at it’s very core. (Wait… we’re still talking about the zombie apocalypse right?) The novel even had a way that could occasionally prevent infection from a zombie scratch or bite! While it isn’t effective 100% of the time it’s one of the few variations of this that have been put down to paper (even though the new Dead Rising game has a way to prevent it as did the Resident Evil franchise.)
There was only one part I’m not sure I could fully enjoy and that had to do with where the novel went at the end. How to train a zombie slave (to be used as a sex toy.) Yes. It went there. On top of this it was also graphic. While it did have a few entertaining moments there absolutely was a large portion of this area that I just couldn’t enjoy. Sorry sex with the undead is a bit too close to necrophilia for me (even if they are moving around while you have your way with them.)
Overall this one was a laugh to read and had a lot of high points and great ways to “live like a king” when the end of days happen by zombie outbreak. It’s not a surefire way to survive when Z-Day occurs though it does have some useful information to keep in mind for dealing with the criminally insane who are trying to live just for themselves (and a few interesting and original survival ideas.)
Available at Amazon
