Synopsis
Action, adventure, horror, comedy… Zombie Billionaire has it all.
The long-awaited sequel to Zombie Bigfoot is here!
You know those series books that say “This book is a standalone?” This one isn’t. Zombie Billionaire picks up directly from where Zombie Bigfoot left off. If you haven’t read “ZBF,” do yourself a favor: get it, read it, and come on back. We’ll be right here waiting for you.
Cameron Carson was dead, to begin with…
In the forests of Idaho, a debonaire billionaire finds himself back from the dead… and the transition is far from seamless. Meanwhile, the tattered remnants of a Bigfoot troop try to make their way to safety while a survival show host, a Shoshone tracker, and a brilliant primatologist struggle to protect their Sasquatchian friends. On top of that, they have to track down the mysterious “Stone that Sings” that started this whole mess. But dark forces with less-than-benevolent intentions are gathering… some looking for the meteorite… others searching for the surviving Bigfoots.
And in Lake Payette, by the shores of the resort town of McCall, something ancient has awakened. And it is HUNGRY.
Review
In Clerks II, film snob and general curmudgeon Randal mocks The Lord of the Rings trilogy as being nothing more than three boring-ass movies about a bunch of people walking. “Even the fucking trees walked in those movies,” he whines. Although Nick Sullivan’s Zombie Bigfoot sequel lacks walking trees, I thought about that scene more often than I should have for a book called Zombie Billionaire.
Zombie Billionaire picks up right where Zombie Bigfoot ended, and in order to discuss this sequel it is necessary that I talk about the end of the prior novel and the big reveals Sullivan packed into that book’s epilogue and epi-epilogue. There, Sullivan set the stage for a lake-based creature feature, with a primordial aquatic horror swallowing, and being changed by, the ancient meteor that transformed campers and Bigfoot alike into undead flesh eaters.
One of those undead monstrosities just so happened to be billionaire Cameron Carson, who was bitten and presumed dead in ZBFs climactic battle. Obviously, Zombie Billionaire finds him back on his feet and, eventually, in search of the mysterious meteor that has transformed him and a fresh water lake monster, known as Sharlie by the locals.
Zombie Bigfoot was a rousing, kinetic, action-packed indie horror that offered a lot of promise for a sequel and properly whet the appetite for a follow-up centering around more zombies and, more importantly, an ancient Nessie-like zombified lake monster. Zombie Billionaire doesn’t exactly squander all this potential, but it sure does take its time delivering the goods. Sullivan’s follow-up is far slower, and oftentimes maddeningly methodical as it re-establishes its various premises, introduces an unnecessarily large cast of new characters, and tries to find stories to tell for returning characters, not all of which are particularly engaging.
Of these returning characters are reality TV show host Russ Cloud, Dr. Sarah Bishop, and their Shoshone guide and tracker, Joseph. Their mission is to recover the meteorite that unleashed all this mayhem last time around before it can cause even more trouble, especially if the military now flooding the Idaho forests in the wake of a Bigfoot attack can get their hands on it first. Problem is, one of the National Guardsmen assigned to protect the campsite the meteorite was last seen at threw the rock off a cliff and into a river. They spend a lot of time trying to figure out which direction the water’s currents sent it and which of the branching rivers it may have taken.
Of course, we readers know exactly where the meteor has gone and what it has done, and it takes freaking forever for this slog of backstory to start connecting with the final moments from Zombie Bigfoot that we’ve been waiting for. And just when we’re about fed up with reading about tracking a rock through a forest, Sullivan switches us over to the remaining tribe of Bigfoot survivors as they… also spend a lot of time walking through the forest.
Cameron Carson, meanwhile, has returned to New York, in time to deal with some industrial espionage and a hostile takeover of his corporation by its board of directors, all while trying to come to grips with his newfound hunger.
There’s also a group of black-bag military operators, a competing reality TV show host and his entourage, a ragtag bunch of Sharlie hunters, a forestry officer finding unusual cast-offs from Sharlie’s newfound dining habits, and a killer who speaks solely by way of showtune titles, as if he’s some kind of ritzy Groot.
Frankly, Zombie Billionaire is overstuffed and oftentimes plodding. The humor is pretty cringey throughout, but I’ll admit to laughing at the Leroy Jenkins bit even if it’s pretty well dated at this point. It lacks the urgency and gory chaos of the previous installment, and by the time the action really kicks into gear with Sharlie and its accompanying lakeside mayhem, it’s too little too late. In between traipsing through the woods and New York boardroom scheming, we get some legit monster action, but never enough. When one character discovers the unusual events unfolding in McCall via a web forum posting and connects the dots about where they must go immediately, almost two-thirds into the book, I found myself wishing that’s where this story had started. I wanted more time on the lake with monster hunters and less time in the woods with rock hunters.
Leave a Reply