While zombies have always permeated horror film, fiction, and poetry, the rise of THE WALKING DEAD TV show brought them into our lives and living rooms. This anthology collects authors from within and outside the horror genre to share their visions of the zombie story.

I particularly enjoyed Jonathan Mayberry's "Jack and Jill," and if you enjoy zombie fiction, you owe it to yourself to check out his YA Rot and Ruin series. Mayberry's Joe Ledger series isn't all about zombies, but it is set in and leads into the world of Rot and Ruin.

Other stories that stood out for me were Chelsea Cain's "A Just-So Horror Story" and Dan Chaon's "How We Escaped Our Certain Fate." ( )

Good set of short stories. My favorite overall had to be Ghost Dog but I liked a few of the stories that went off track with the traditional zombie storyline. ( )

This is a follow-up of sorts to Golden's earlier zombie anthology, The New Dead. I liked that one a lot, so I went into this one with fairly high expectations, but, unfortunately, it didn't do nearly as much for me.

There are maybe a handful of stories here I would describe as good, with the rest ranging from okay all the way down to annoying. Which maybe isn't actually all that bad a hit rate for an anthology; it's rare for every story to be a winner, or for all of them to match any given reader's tastes. Still, the previous volume was so good that it's hard not to feel disappointed. Especially as what impressed me so much about that one is how fresh and clever its authors' various takes on the zombie concept felt. Too many of the stories in this one feel as if they're trying -- maybe a little too hard -- to be fresh and clever, but falling down in the execution. There are too many chunks of exposition explaining how this or that version of the zombie scenario happened, with variations in detail and setting making them slightly different from other versions I'd seen, but usually not quite different enough to be interesting. And, you know, the first time a living, breathing human is referred to as being "the walking dead" in a zombie story because they're in a hopeless situation or something, it might seem meaningful, but after encountering it for the third time in the course of one anthology, it starts to feel like yet another cliche.

I wouldn't say this is bad, and the best stories in it are probably worth reading. But if you're looking for thought-provoking, well-written zombie-themed stories, I recommend The New Dead instead, then John Joseph Adams' excellent The Living Dead and The Living Dead 2, and then, if you still haven't had your flesh-eating fill, I'd say go ahead and check this out. ( )

Usually, I find it difficult to give anthologies a reasonable review, as there are usually a couple of howlers in a collection. This was different though & I did quite like the variety & difference in this collection. Worth a look. ( )

I love to read about zombies, I do not love story collections. I probably shouldn't have picked this, as I may never finish it. I really liked the first story, Biters by Mark Morris. It was very suspensful up until the end which I found anticlimatic. The second story Why Mothers Let Their Babies Watch Television by Chelsea Cain was very short. I was really looking forward to trying this author and a two page story does not make much of an impression. Carousel by Orson Scott Card was wonderful, the zombies in it were not gross. The other story that I really liked was Antiparrellelogram by Amber Benson. It featured an origninal world and was fun to read. I think it is a great collection so far! ( )