On a small island in the middle of the Mississippi river, a meteor storm has unexpected consequences.
The radiation from the meteorite kills a family who then rise from the dead, but they're melting. the only way to stop themselves melting is to sate their hunger by eating the flesh of the living. Everyone they eat is affected by the same malady and soon there is a fight to the end for the rapidly shrinking number of humans left on the island versus the increasing horde of the Melting Dead.
This book knows what it's aiming for and it mostly hits that target so kudos for that. Mr Lamoreux is kind enough to let us know exactly which films he's homaging (or ripping off depending on how much you're enjoying the book) by namechecking them every time he does it.
The new variant on the zombie cliché was a welcome thing. the writing... wasn't. This book needs an editor to pick up on the grammatical errors. Also the constant "this was like this bit out of that film" was wearying after a while.
It wasn't funny enough for me to count it as a horror comedy. It wasn't scary enough to be an effective horror novel. It falls very much between two stools.
There's a common aphorism that says that a bad horror novel becomes a comedy, and I think that might be what the writer was trying for. He did write quite a bad horror novel. It's entertaining enough in its own terms, but I had to drag myself through the last half of the book.
But hey. with a title like The Melting dead and that cover, what was I hoping for?
No comments:
Post a Comment