Books tagged with: undead

A Festival of Skeletons is a dark comedic fantasy novel by RJ Astruc. At such rare times of self-doubt, Sink usually fell back on his old adage: What I see I cannot change. But in the aftermath of the massacre it sounded somehow hollow. The merkind hadn’t been right but she hadn’t been far wrong. Fa...

Abhorsen is a young adult fantast novel by Garth Nix and is the third volume in the Old Kingdom Series, following on from the events in Sabriel and Lirael. Prince Sameth and the Abhorsen in waiting Lirael are contemplating their next move at the Abhorsens house in the old Kingdom. Surrounded on all...

I found this book during a post Christmas hunt in my local Waterstones after receiving a number of gift vouchers. I had never read anything by the author (or indeed the publisher) but have seen the third novel in the series (the Immorality Engine) appearing around the web for a while. For me one of...

Anno Frankenstein is a novel in the Pax Britannia series featuring the intrepid adventurer Ulysses Quicksilver. In this alternative universe, Magna Britannia is the undisputed superpower of the world whereas since the second great European war, Hitler’s Nazi party has been reduced to the status of a...

Autumn was originally self published and given away by the author ten years ago, since then it has been read by hundreds of thousands of people and even turned into a film starring David Carradine and Dexter Fletcher. It's now published by those fantastic people over at Gollancz and I must say that...

Carrying on right from where we left the survivors back in Autumn: The City, Purification takes us further down the Zombie survival road. Pretty much imprisoned within the underground Army base this small group sit and wait while on the surface the crowd of shuffling corpses is growing in size every...

Autumn - The City is the follow up to the sensational zombie novel Autumn, promising the same power and subtle horror of the first. It takes a lot of guts to start a story again right from the beginning but told from a different perspective - a brave move that could have gone horribly wrong. Instead...

Beautiful Dead: Arizona is the second volume in the Beautiful Dead series of novels by Eden Maguire. Following on from the events in "Jonas", Darina has seen no sign of the Beautiful Dead for weeks and is missing Phoenix all over again. With so much still to resolve, surely they will return soon? Ar...

Beautiful Dead: Jonas is the first volume in a new series by Eden Maguire. A young adult novel, Jonas follows the events surrounding the pupils of Ellerton High. Phoenix is the fourth teenager to died within the space of a year, the victim of a knife attack. The three previous deaths, Jonas in a mot...

Connors Folly is the second volume in the Trance Warriors fantasy series by Robert C Auty, following on from the Siege of Scarn. The epic siege is finally at an end the new Grynn King is tasked with taking the fight to the enemy, to do so he must first find the white palace and finish his training a...

The Word of Kemmler, a book of potentially catastrophic power should it fall into the wrong hands. Mor tif er ous forces have gathered in Chicago and it would seem the windy city may be the resting place of the ancient tome. Of course that means it's up to Harry to prevent the book falling into the...

Erekos is a fantasy novel by A M Tuomala. The nations Erekos and Weigenland have fought against each other for over three hundred years, a war that has seen both sides struggle to hold the borderland between them. As the flood season begins the King of the Erekoi thinks he has discovered a powerful...

Abarrach, the World of Stone is just that: lava, stone, poisonous fumes, and precious little food that can be grown. The peoples of Abarrach rely on giant rune-inscribed stone pillars called colossi to provide warmth and breathable atmosphere, but the colossi have been failing slowly for many years....

From a Watery Grave is the 6th novel in the Jason Dark series of dime novels by Guido Henkel. A quaint seaside town seems the ideal place for an English summer holiday. Little do its inhabitants suspect, that a century-old curse is about to throw their idyllic existence into turmoil and terror. Wrai...

There are writers you admire, and then there are writers who rearrange something in your head, and Clark Ashton Smith belongs firmly in the second category for me. I came to Lost Worlds more or less by accident, knowing Smith only as a name that hovered at the edge of the Lovecraft circle, and I was...

Mountain Man introduces us to a world that is now mostly inhabited by the walking undead and Augustus Berry lives a day-to-day existence that is largely composed of getting drunk, foraging for supplies and preparing for the day when the Zombie horde will come up the side of the mountain and penetrat...

Nekropolis is the first volume in a new series of fantasy horror, written by Tim Waggoner and is based on his novella Necropolis. Matt Richter is a former cop now a private eye with a big difference, he is a zombie (could happen to anyone really). A zombie private detective does have it's advantages...

We are once again re-united with one of the few survivors in a world infested with the undead. Gus is a little more dishevelled than the last time we saw him, more bruised and a bit more reckless too as his daily existence of waking up, getting drunk and preparing for the inevitable zombie horde beg...

Terrorlord is the 9th volume in the Jason Dark series by Guido Henkel. Released by a dark and ancient ritual, the Terrorlord is freed once more onto the mortal plane, his one desire to open the seven gates of hell and unleash the undead hordes upon mankind. Jason Dark has the misfortune to have alre...

On the bloody battlefield littered with the dead and dying, two figures step cautiously through the viscera, the blood, guts and many feasting crows. These two appear ill-matched; one a slight and nimble figure, the other a hulking brute. You may be forgiven for thinking that perhaps they are there...

The Desert of Souls is a sweeping tale that is firmly rooted in the traditional sword and sorcery genre and yet flows with a steady, refreshing grace. Set in 8th Century Baghdad the novel is full of an eastern style that sets it apart from the majority of the genre. It's a refreshing environment and...

The world has ended and the few who remain are faced with a struggle to survive, not only with a lack of food and heat (not to mention any real form of civilisation) but also against the hordes of shambling undead who look to rip, tear, kill and eat not to mention the possibility of an even more dan...

Charlie Higson is probably best known as part of a series that for many in the UK was one of the funniest things to watch on TV in the 90's - the Fast Show (known as Brilliant in the US). The irreverent and often off-beat humour was guaranteed to make me laugh and still does. Until this year I didn'...

The Good, The Mad and the Undead follows on from the authors previous book A Heist Too Far which we were lucky enough to review last year. Here we are re-united with the dangerous, blue-skinned assassin Mallik who has split up with his comrades Dick and Jules in order to let the heat die down follow...

Following the horrific murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a dis-used graveyard populated by ghosts and other undead creatures of the night - completely unaware of the death of his parents. Taking pity on the innocent child the ghosts agree to raise him as their own, naming him Nobod...

The Return man is a post-apocalyptic Zombie novel that manages to offer a few surprises and original ideas in this rapidly expanded sub-genre. The story goes that a mass "outbreak" divides America in two, on the east the untouched survivors remain safe while the west has become truly wild - a ravage...

The Zombie survival guide tells you everything you need to know in order to protect yourself from the restless dead. Written by Max Brooks, the guide follows a no nonsense and logical path that draws you in and makes you believe that a future zombie threat might just be possible. With a timeline tha...

Vegas Knights is an urban fantasy novel by Matt Forbeck. Set in Las Vegas (Nevada) the story tells the tale of two college guys Jackson and Bill at the University of Michigan who also happen to be students of magic (or "trans-quantum postulating" in scientific terminology). Having learnt such valuab...

Viking Dead is a dark fantasy novel by Toby Venables, part of the "Tomb of the Dead" collection published by Abaddon Books. Bjolf, son of Earling is the captain and leader of the Viking raiding ship "Raven" who after reluctantly fleeing from a raid gone wrong find themselves sailing into very strang...

After all the years spent fighting off the Zombie hordes in isolation at his home in Annapolis, Gus has finally found a new life of peace. A daily routine of tending and policing the fields of the little community, rarely interupted by shambling corpes. It seems the epidemic is finally beginning to...

A Zombie novel by the son of comic legend Mel Brooks, World War Z is told as a series of interconnected interviews from survivors of the zombie war all over the world. This method of storytelling is very different, there is no central protagonist or contiguous plot, instead we learn about the story...

Brains, Brains, BRAINS!, you just have to love those lurching, decaying animated corpses. The living dead make a great enemy and here we have wall-to-wall flesh eating monsters, ghouls and things that go bite in the night, brought to (un)life by some of the best horror and fantasy writers in the wor...

The Nameless City is a short story by HP lovecraft and is generally considered to be the first Cthulhu Mythos story, published in 1921. In the middle of the Arabian Peninsula is an ancient ruin, it's been there longer than humanity and was built by a race mostly forgotten. These crawling reptiles ma...

I have known a few archaeologists and historians in my time, and I can tell you that adventure is not always in their blood. I have found that they have chosen those professions as they seek the opposite of adventure. Perhaps a nice library or a quiet dig site. Given the choice between a cup of tea...

Life in a Fantasy novel is often epic. A grand journey to destroy a ring or a fight to the death against an invading force. Our heroes rush from one end of the land on a mission , but if you look behind them you may see some of the normal people pass in a blur. The shopkeepers, the local police, the...

The Fantasy genre is broader than some people try to make out. I have read Tolkien and there is nothing else quite like that, although many followed the path. Modern Fantasy is often darker and violent, but back in the 80s and 90s there was more of a sense of adventure and magic. The likes of the  D...

The genre of Urban Fantasy is pathed with perils, which means that it should be perfect for Alex Jennings’ The Ballad of Perilous Graves . How do you make your modern fantasy stand out from the others without making it impenetrable for the reader? A unique location or voice works well. An author who...

The supernatural has always worked well with noir as they are both genres of the night. It is only an undead hop and skip between a detective finding a corpse in the alley and that corpse waking up. Conan Doyle walked the line between the supernatural and the super-real, Holmes always discovered tha...

I have read a lot of Fantasy fiction over the years and have picked up trends as time passes from the classic High Fantasy epics of the 80s to the gritty Low Fantasy of more recent times. A new trend is in town, and I see Travis Baldree at the vanguard of Cosy Fantasy. Legends & Lattes was a sfbook....

Naming your book The Last Phi Hunter comes with some idea that this will be the last of their kind, but Salinee Goldenberg proves this is not the case with a sequel, Way of the Walker . But is this Walker an actual Phi Hunter? If your job is to find and kill the undead (Phi), befriending them and he...