Synopsis
A VAMPIRE IN ZOMBIELAND
You wouldn’t like Coburn. People don’t, as a rule. And that’s okay, because he doesn’t like people much either. People are food.
Five years ago, Coburn went to sleep – wasn’t exactly planned – and he’s just woken up to find most everybody in the world dead. Not dead like him; he looks human, drinks blood. He’s smart. They’re… none of those things. They outnumber him by about a million to one, and their clotted blood cannot sustain him.
Now he’s starving, and on the run. He has to find blood, soon, and – like it or not – he’s gonna have to keep an eye on the frail flesh-bags he finds it in. Time for the wolf to turn shepherd.
No, Coburn doesn’t like people. But he’ll have to learn to.
“Thank the good Lord for Abaddon Books… exactly the kind of new spin on zombies I was looking for.”
GRAEME’S FANTASY BOOK REVIEW
Review
The complete Double Dead is one of those books I knew absolutely nothing about. I got it as part of the included section on Audible. I was just having a quick scan, noticed it, liked the cover and thought that it is Chuck Wendig. A name that I am familiar with, but had not read any of his books.
So I thought why not?
The Complete Double Dead contains two stories. Firstly, there is the original novel, Double Dead and a novella entitled Bad Blood (which for spoilers sake, I am not going to tell you much about as it would spoil the first!)
The complete Double Dead tells the story of Coburn the Vampire, who for some unknown reason has been lying dormant in the city of New York. He is awaked by blood, which revives him from his slumber. Finding himself in a world that has gone to shit, he awakes to find that the world is in the grip of the zombie apocalypse, which he disastrously finds out when he attempts to sink his fangs into two mysterious figures that are making a meal out of some animal, not far from where he was resting.
After a series of misadventures, which includes him being bitten by a Zombie (which inadvertently causes some kind of super zombie), he ends up finding a dog, who he calls Creampuff due to the fact that he thinks it resembles a tasty snack that he can eat between meals and a group of people that he ends up protecting.
I must say, I quite enjoyed this blood splattered gore fest that is equally silly and at times an ultra gore fest.
The book is written as a first-person narrative and we get to see the world through Coburn’s eyes, which ultimately is not pretty as he is a complete douchebag. I mean, he only ends up protecting the people that he comes across due to the fact that the people are his food source, and he does not want his food source to become zombie food. There are a number of other characters in the book, and to be honest, they are as reprehensible as Coburn, except for Kayla, the teenage daughter of one of the group who is severely neglected but has a secret all of her own.
The book is caustically funny as the group make their way to what they have been told is a sanctuary, and whilst there may be survivors, the people are just as bad as Coburn as they try to survive in the zombie apocalypse.
Be warned, this book is totally gross out fun. Coburn is not one of those vampires that is all suave and sophisticated. He is interested in one thing and one thing only; how much blood he can get down his neck.
Throughout the book, there are various references to the great zombie films, like Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, and Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2, as well as Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead.
If you want a book that makes no balls about it being unadulteratedly blood soaked craziness then have a try a Double Dead.
Mark aka Fantasy Book Nerd
I’m Mark, otherwise known as Fantasy Book Nerd (I don’t know if you have seen my blog, but it’s been going for a while), and this is me in my other iteration, the horror lover. This time without the normal skull mask on, well actually, I do still have the skull mask on, I mean, I can’t subject you all to my real face, there’s laws against that!
Horror was actually the first thing I got into as a kid. I got bought horror books for kids, I watched all the old Hammer Horror and Universal movies before moving onto video nasties when the video player was released, and also read a load of horror, including all the old stalwarts like James Herbert, Stephen King and others.
Leave a Reply