Monster Island: A Zombie Novel by David Wellington Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Monster Island: A Zombie Novel
Book Review: Far-fetched but fun
Summary: 4 Stars
Monster Island is an interesting take on the zombie genre - and of the 3 part trilogy, this is the book I liked the most. The first two parts of the book are good, and I liked the central concept that "thinking" zombies could be created if people somehow were hooked up to oxygen machines when they died. However, Wellington does ask his readers to increasingly suspend their disbelief, to the point where you start to wonder when the Cheshire Cat and the Man in the Moon are going to show up. So not only do people come back from the dead, and some are sentient, but they can also do mind control and telepathy and eat so much that their bodies become gargantuan. That's my main problem with the book - the rest of it, the story of a group of survivors trying to infiltrate Manhattan in order to get AIDS drugs is a pretty good set-up.
I particularly liked the character of Marisol, who gets a very brief mention in the second book and plays a larger role in the third one. As a failed horror actress with a bad attitude, she provides some needed black humour.
The book was clearly interesting enough for me to read the next 2 in the series, though it felt like decreasing dividends as the story becomes further more mystical and strange the further you go into it.
Book Review: The definition of silly
Summary: 1 Stars
Zombie novels obviously require suspension of disbelief but it would take much more than that to take Monster Island seriously.
A rag tag group of teenage girl guerrilla warriors from Somalia and an American weapons inspector sail from Africa to New York to search for AIDS medication needed by a local warlord.
Trouble is, society has buckled under the weight of a plague of walking corpses and NYC is home to a million undead ghouls - including one that can still think and has the power to command the armies of shuffling walking corpses.
As if that wasn't ridiculous enough, the story also features ancient mummies in the metropolitan museum being reanimated and a Scottish mummy who is straight out of Saturday morning cartoons.
Monster Island is utterly unconvincing and lacks any real tension, characterisation or depth.
Anyone intersted in the genre should check out World War Z by Max Brooks, which presents a chillingly plausible global collapse and comments on the futilty of a society unprepared for disaster.
Book Review: read it!
Summary: 4 Stars
a good read, the plot is very pacy, good story telling and loved the bad guy was most amusing, thought the book was so good ive started the next one, its taken me some time to find a decent zombie novel, id recoment word war z and throughly advise anyone with half a brain cell NOT TO READ PLAGUE OF THE DEAD, utter trashBook Review: Don't waste your time
Summary: 1 Stars
I have now read all three books in this trilogy by David Wellington. The story is ok and I would have given it a three if it stood alone as a zombie novel, however after reading the final book in the trilogy I was so disappointed in the ending I felt as though I had wasted my time in reading any of them. Therefore I decided to give this book only one star because ultimately I felt really deflated and disappointed.Book Review: not as good...
Summary: 2 Stars
...as folk are making out. The writing is quite dry, there's no real impetus to get to the end and despite one or two good ideas, I found this quite unsatisfying.
Lucky for me, I bought a couple of zombie books at the same time, and the second one I read was actually fantastic. By all means buy this book to see what it's like, but do what I did too - get The Rising by Brian Keene, which is a much more vivid book, indeed more like a movie than a book, and read it after Monster Island. I'll be surprised if you don't appreciate the jump in literary power, imagination and outright horror that The Rising provides.