Last Stand in a Dead Land by Eric S. Brown follows Jacob and an ever-increasing band of Zombie Apocalypse survivors as they are rescued from the ravages of the zombie apocalypse by the enigmatic, superhuman Elijah. As the title suggests, the book drags our unwilling protagonists toward a fateful last encounter full of more than a few surprises.
The Good:
There’s a lot of action that kicks off in the very first scene and doesn’t stop until the epilogue. It’s easy to follow and fast-paced, and Brown has a flair for it. This splatterfest romp through a dead world embraces the B-Movie feel with abandon, with frequent homages to the Living Dead and the Dawn of the Dead traditions, and even a tip of the hat to Zombieland. Over-the-top (and downright unrealistic) gore gleefully splatters almost every page.
More than just zombies are afoot, and without revealing too much I’ll just say that this is both refreshing and off-putting. It puts a good spin on the typical B-zombie experience, but comes across as a gimmick. Given the feel that Mr. Brown incorporated throughout, I think his target audience will enjoy the twist.
I’m somewhat amazed by the sheer number of zombie movie clichés that Mr. Brown managed to fold into a short book. The never-ending tropes are more than a bit much for my taste, but the book will shine for those who enjoy such things.
The Bad:
While the writing is better than many zombie books I’ve read, the book needs a good edit, with particular attention toward just freaking enormous paragraphs, a wandering point of view in nearly every scene, and small redundancies that could make the writing tighter by their absence.
The characters all use essentially the same dialogue (including thinking about the zombies as “rotters”), and it all comes across as how an Englishman would imagine Americans might talk. “Sorry, mate,” would only ever be said during a Crocodile Dundee impersonation, and “Dude, this isn’t a bloody episode of the Dukes of Hazard,” while funny, is not something that would ever emerge from an American mouth.
The Ugly:
At no point in the book did I even know enough about these cookie cutter characters to care even the slightest bit about any of them. There is no tragedy in this story full of death, and in the exact sense that it works as a gory comedy, it falls flat as a horror novel. I was always amused, but never engaged.
The Verdict:
Last Stand in a Dead Land was not my cup of tea, but if you like books that read like B-Movies, buy it.
Available on Amazon.
