Timothy McGivney

What I loved most about this was the intimacy of it. By telling the story through the eyes of the 5 main characters, our view of the catastrophe is limited to personal experience. There are no highlight reels of zombie attacks across the world, no montages of military or political agendas, and no scenes of desperate scientists trying to find a cure. In fact, we never find out how the zombie plague started, why it mutated, or what the end result will be. When you’re 5 survivors thrown together by circumstance, the struggle to survive is far more important that indulging in philosophical musings on the big picture. They characters are definitely an odd bunch, but it's their interactions that carry the story along.

At its heart, this is a blood-and-guts horror story that never shies away from the gore. It’s creepy and scary, with action scenes that are frantic and intense, and characters who are delightfully aware of their own horror movie mistakes. Well-paced, this is also a story with moments of friendship and quiet reflection . . . along with some graphic sex scenes that likely wouldn’t survive the transition to film, but which are never gratuitous, and really do serve to advance the plot and develop the characters.

If you’re looking for a good, action-packed zombie story with characters who deliberately avoid the genre stereotypes, then I can’t recommend this enough. Forget the mash-ups and parodies, and indulge yourself in some good, old-fashioned zombie horror. I had an absolute blast reading it, and I am definitely looking forward to more.

http://bibrary.blogspot.com/2011/02/review-zombielicious-by-timothy.html… (mehr)

Big warning: if you are searching “only” a romance, Zombielicious is way more than that. And second warning, even if there is a gay couple, Walt and Joey, who really steal the scene are the two women, Jill and Molly, in good and bad.

The writing style is quite original, and in a way, “fast”: there are different acts, and for each of them we will read the different point of view of all main characters, always in the same sequence, Molly, Walt, Jill, Ace and Joey. Of course, I was more interested in Walt and Joey, and their story was, among all the horror happening around, very sweet. Walt is still mourning the loss of Barney, a guy he fell in love in high school, but whom he had not the courage to protect; Barney committed suicide and Walt is still playing the “if” game: if he had the courage to help him, if he had the courage to come out, if he had the courage to let him know he was not alone… Usually you don’t have a second chance, but here it’s for Walt: not only a chance to finally prove his courage but also to fall in love again, with a guy, Joey, that is almost the carbon copy of Barney.

Zombielicious has really a “young” feeling, and not only since both Walt than Joey are really young, 20 and 18 years old, but also since it seemed like one of those modern videogames, where you win according to how many “evil” people you kill; and as in those games, unfortunately life is not sacred, and so even if there are 5 players, it’s not said that all of them will arrive at the end of the game.

Truth be told I didn’t care much for the gory details, and all the zombies environment was quite claustrophobic, it seemed nowhere was safe for our two heroes to have some quality time alone, but maybe since they were young, and horny, or maybe since the author liked them, Walt and Joey have their chance to share their feelings also in a more physical way; that was probably what I prefer to read, of course.

For sure, Timothy McGivney didn’t choose an easy plot, but he was faithful to that, as I said, in good and bad, so, when settling to read this novel, be ready at every turn, and aware nothing is sacred.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608202631/?tag=elimyrevandra-20… (mehr)