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You can keep your whiny teenage vampires. I’m officially giving up blood-suckers for the undead—thanks to captivating and darkly funny novels like author Scott Kenemore’s clever Midwestern zombie thriller, Zombie, Ohio.
When Peter Mellor wakes up on the side of the road after a serious car accident, he’s confused and shaken—and he can’t seem to remember much of anything. But it never occurs to him that he might actually be dead. Sure, he’s sustained a pretty nasty head injury, but at least he’s still able to walk around—so he slowly makes his way home, to the address on his driver’s license.
Peter soon learns that the country is in the midst of some kind of zombie apocalypse. The dead are rising up and hunting for brains—and, the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that he might just be one of them. After all, brains are starting to sound pretty tasty.
A walking, talking, thinking zombie, Peter realizes that he has a distinct advantage over the rest of the undead. And as he wanders the Ohio countryside, he becomes a leader among zombies and a legend among the living.
Told from the point-of-view of a newly undead zombie who’s trying to come to grips with his strange new lifestyle, Zombie, Ohio mixes horror, humor, and a hint of murder mystery for a dreadfully clever (and frightfully addictive) undead adventure.
Peter Mellor is unlike any zombie you’ve met before. Somehow—perhaps through some kind of strange zombie evolution—his zombie brain is still functioning. Unlike his moaning cohorts, he can still talk and think—and that gives him an unusual perspective on the whole zombie apocalypse. He was a rather unpopular philosophy professor in life—and, in death, he tries to make sense of his situation, trying to figure out how he should behave (while, at the same time, trying to figure out how, exactly, he’s supposed to get at his victims’ brains). Should he be a “good zombie,” helping the remaining humans survive the zombie outbreak—or should he join the pack and give in to his brain-hunting urges?
Despite his love of brains, though, Peter is a strangely likeable character. He’s smart and funny, with a dry and sarcastic sense of humor. Even though he has a pretty dark past—and a pitch-black present—you’ll still enjoy joining him on his cross-Ohio adventure. And, along the way, you’ll find yourself curious about his mysterious death while caring about how his journey will end.
Though it ultimately leaves some pretty big questions unanswered, Zombie, Ohio is still a satisfying and entertaining undead adventure—one that has both brains and heart. Fans of zombie tales (everything from the Romero classics to the 2009 zomcom Zombieland) won’t want to miss this one.
