Wellington, David. Monster island. New York: Thunder Mouth Press, 2006. 282pp.

Old school, gonzo, over-the-top, gross-out zombie horror! Such joy must come into every life every now and then!

David Wellington's new zombie trilogy begins with this novel, Zombie Island. Interestingly enough, all three novels have already been serialized (apparently in somewhat different form) in blog form by the author. The links are in Wellington's Wikipedia page I link to above and I also link to them at the end of this post. Since each of the 60+ chapters in the novel was originally a blog post, they tend to be short and sharp, each with a good cliffhanger ending. The novel has a very fast, breakneck pace leaving the reader almost breathless as we race through. This is a good thing.

The storyline is rather basic and contrived, of course. For some reason, a UN worker in Somalia named Dekalb is forced by a warlord to journey to New York to get AIDS drugs that he thinks are for sure in the UN building there, possibly the only such stash of AIDS drugs left in the world. The catch? The entire world is overrun by zombies, making the mission to NYC a bit problematic. Once in New York, our hero must face off with the zombie hoards controlled by a newly empowered zombie lord. His companions? A gang of gun-toting teenaged Somali school girls sworn to the warlord. Right, who needs a plot. And I mean that as a compliment.

In any case, we really don't know how the whole zombie plague came about, a question that is apparently answered in the prequel/sequel Zombie Nation. That one's been published in book form and needless to say, I'll be getting it pretty soon.

For fun, here's a listing of all Wellington's online serializations. Enjoy!

• Monster Island
  
• Monster Nation
  
• Monster Planet
  
• Thirteen Bullets (vampire novel)
  
• Frostbite (werewolves, currently in progress)