Dead Living

by Glenn Bullion

Horror/Dystopian

Book Description

It didn’t take long for the world to die. And it didn’t take long, either, for the dead to rise.

Born on the day everything ended, a world filled with the walking dead is the only one that Aaron knows. Kept in seclusion, his family teaches him the basics. How to read and write. How to survive.

Then Aaron makes a shocking discovery. The undead, who desire nothing but flesh, ignore him. It’s as if he’s invisible to them.

The survivors of the old suburb of Lexington call a high school their home. They live day to day, without any of the luxuries mankind used to enjoy. Samantha is a product of the new world. Alone, cold, looking out only for herself. She and the other residents of Lexington feel their hope dwindling. They need change. They need someone who can face the corpses. They need someone who can live in a city of the dead.

They need Aaron.

MY THOUGHTS: 4 OUT OF 5 FLEURS DE LIS

Dead Living by Glenn Bullion

I am a huge zombie fan, from TV series, to books, to movies, so I was super excited to read this book. However, since I AM such a huge zombie fan, I can’t help seeing certain similarities between the different types of content I consume. I did find Dead Living to have several things in common with shows such as The Walking Dead, but there was enough originality and action to keep me turning the pages late into the night.

The book started out with a bang at the very beginning of the zombie apocalypse, which doesn’t happen too often. As with most zombie stories, no specific reason is given for the outbreak, but it is spread through bites, and zombies must be shot in the head to be killed.

Let me stop right here for a small aside: why is it that zombies in zombie books/movies/etc. are never actually referred to as zombies?? They are called anything but–infected, corpse, living dead, and as seen in this book and The Walking Dead…Walkers.

Anyway, the story starts with the zombie apocalypse, and Aaron just happens to be born right on the exact day it starts. Although he loses his mother that day, his father survives and raises him along with a few other lucky people he met on that day.

As time moves on, the undead threat does not go away or even diminish. Aaron ends up alone, but discovers he is unique…the zombie hordes walk right past him without so much as a nibble. Aaron’s been able to survive on his own for the past 10 years, but he meets the feisty Samantha by chance, and his life is immediately changed.

No, this is not a love story. It is a zombie story with a tiny bit of love. If you’re looking for excessive gore, that’s not here–but there is plenty of killing, both undead and human. The story clips along nicely with bits of action then a calm period, but the threat of something is always there in the background.

I liked Aaron a lot, and he was surprisingly sane for someone who had been living in the middle of a city of the dead, alone, for ten years. He is selfless and brave, and the only thing I really didn’t get about him is why he wanted to keep his ability a secret. Sam is also pretty cool, the complete opposite of Aaron–aloof, quick to fight, and keeps her distance from everyone even though she lives in a small community of survivors. She slowly falls for Aaron, and everyone but her knows it.

The only things I had trouble with while reading this book were believability and how coincidental some of the things that happened were. It’s hard to say what bothered me without giving it away, but you’ll know once you get to those points.

Those small things didn’t stop me from devouring this book, and I would definitely recommend that even casual fans of the genre give it a read.

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About the Author

I live in Maryland with my wonderful wife and four cats. I love gaming, computer technology, movies, and of course, reading and writing. I love science fiction and especially horror and the paranormal. Ghosts, vampires, werewolves, zombies, anything supernatural, all beautiful subjects.

I’ve been writing since I was twelve years old. There’s just something about creating a story that I like. I always try come up with something that hasn’t been done, or is unique in some way. It could be someone with demonic powers, or something much more simple, such as a person that zombies ignore. It’s fun to create a character, give him or her a personality and background, and watch them evolve through a story.

I’ve tried other subjects, but always drift back to horror and paranormal. There’s a reason why we keep going back to horror movies and books, why they’ve made fifty Friday the 13th movies. People like to be scared, but more than that, I think paranormal and horror stir the imagination like nothing else. We’re all just a little nervous to open that closet door at midnight, or look under the bed.

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