Dead City

Over the long weekend I burned through Dead City by Joe McKinney and I liked it pretty well. If you enjoyed World War Z then pick this book up, because it pretty much reads like an extended chapter from that book. It focuses on a the first 24 hours of a zombie outbreak in San Antonio, TX and specifically follows one cop who’s fighting through the hordes to find his wife and newborn.

It starts off a little slow, but does an excellent job of building momentum and tension. The main character was very bland and it wasn’t until halfway through the book that the reader gets introduced to some interesting characters, but it’s worth the wait. Mckinney does seem very savvy to police procedures and equipment, plus he also seems very familiar with San Antonio, down to the street names.

My big complaint is that you feel like you miss the apocalypse part. The character sees his first zombies, gets knocked out, and when he comes to you feel like everyone is already dead and he’s traveling through a destroyed city instead of being in the thick of the fall. Everywhere he goes has already seen the worst of it, and I felt like I was missing out.

My other complaint about this book is McKinney immediately starts relating the characters experience to zombie movies and this really took me out of the moment. I felt the author should come up with his own unique way of relating this characters experience instead of copping out by saying, “zombies, just like from all those movies you’ve seen.”

But he stops beating you over the head with movie comparisons pretty quick and does a great job with descriptive gore and action. He does what a good zombie read should do very well, give you zombies on a scale that you can’t get from a film.

3 out of 5 on the decomposition scale.

© 2007 D. L. Noah