I never got the craze for the zombie this and zombie that. I saw the premise as thinner than vampire storyline which in my book only had a good day with Buffy franchise. But then I got Kindle and run out of stuff to read and decided to pick up something less lively and more shambling. And you know what I found - there are a few great books hiding behind the 'zombie' label.
I read them in the worng order, so to help you guys out, here is the way I would recommend to check out if the zombie genre is interesting to you:
Start with World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
. It is written as a historical book documenting the memories of people that have survived the world wide zombie apocalipse is a series of escalating short stories. This is a perfect bathroom or bus reading. Each story focuses on how people react (or fail to react) to a radical change in their environment. Zombies are a tool to expose the human condition for this book.
The next you could read (or you could even skip this if it get a bit boring for you) is The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead
- this is a problem solving book, it basically takes a problem ("ZOMBIES!") a goal ("I want to survive!") and describes the logical steps needed to reach the goal in the context of the problem. It is very educational on the issue of problem solving, especially with unusual problems. But it can get boring for people - if so, don't give up, but just skip this book for now and move on the the best of them all ...
The third is a trilogy, two books are already published, the third is coming soon - first books is Feed (Newsflesh, Book 1)
and the second is Deadline (Newsflesh, Book 2)
. This is a rare gem of modern literature. Basically this is a book set in the world long time after a zombie outbreak (with a good reason why and how it happened) where people have already lived a few decades with the problema and the kids are very used to it. So the book is written from a perspective of a young woman and her brother, who were born after Rising and are now into one of the most dangerous profession - journalism. :) Early on they become the first bloggers to be picked to follow a presidential election campagn (book was written before Obama campaign really took off) and it only get wilder from there.
I really liked these books. So much so, that I will now explore the other zombie fiction books to see if there possibly is something good there as well. Any recommendations?