( #Zombies, #ScottKenemore )
Frequent readers of this blog know that I have a thing for zombies. A few weeks ago, Amazon had a Kindle sale on a zombie book that I never heard of before called “Zombie, Ohio”. For a few dollars, I didn’t mind taking a risk.
While reading, I could tell that the author (Scott Kenemore) was a fan of the zombie genre because it reads a bit like fan fiction (I found similarities to a book I read last year called “Living with the Dead” by Joshua Guess). The benefit from being a legitimate fan of the genre is that Kenemore was trying to avoid using cliches, but the writing lacked a certain polish that could have pushed “Zombie, Ohio” to be much better.
The plot centers around a man who wakes up as a zombie. Although a zombie, he still has the ability to think but has no memory (at first). As the book progresses the zombie tries to remember how he died and attempts to find his place in the world. The plot was creative, but Kenemore misfires in his attempt to have the character explore his zombie nature and then go back to being a hero. Kenemore has a good time blowing up zombie cliches by using the thinking zombie in unique ways. He would have been better off leaving zombie as an antagonist for the human characters, since the redemption sections were very weak and the zombie playing mind-games with the humans was one of the things that worked well.
Overall this was a fun book that I didn’t mind reading or spending a few bucks on. It was certainly no World War Z which is the benchmark for any zombie book, but the author got creative and mixed up several genres into an entertaining quick read.
