Custom Search

Sunday, April 24, 2011

A Zombie's History of the United States reviewed


Ever since World War Z hit stores the book world has been flooded with zombie stories.  There's the regular zombie invasion stories or anthology stories and the like but what really took off is the parodies.  From Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to various How to be a Zombie books.  It would be obvious that there will be a book that would insert zombies into various eras of history.  And today is the day where I talk about A Zombie's History of the United States.

Hey kids, you know all those cool moments in history?  The Revolutionary War, The Alamo, World War II and Theodore Roosevelt's reign of awesome?!  Of course you do but what you don't know is that those eras and many more from American History were filled with zombies.  Why did we cross the Bering Sea to North America?  To run away from zombies.  What happened during the first winter the Pilgrims stayed in North America?  Zombies.  What really happened to William McKinley?  He turned into a zombie and Theodore Roosevelt put him down to become the new president.  There's many other bits of zombie history as well but you get the idea.

Maybe it's just me but I am getting a bit tired of these zombie revisionist books.  Most of the time they offer very little to the table.  For the most part, History is no exception with it just inserting zombies into American events with little context or style.  And what really bothered me with that approach is how almost every important death or massacre is zombie related.  Humanity is pretty much painted as innocent victims terrorized by zombies.  I mean that's the intent and I get that, it just doesn't work out that way like the author intended it to.

However, a few people did get some Historical Badass Upgrades which were a hoot to read about.  Benjamin Franklin killed a zombie girl by jamming some guy's pen in her ear and then using his son's hammer to nail it in there.  Clark from the Lewis and Clark Expedition had to kill Zombie Lewis.  Theodore Roosevelt battled zombie William McKinley to become the next president of America.  And that's only a few really awesome displays of badassery in the book.  That's where the book shines and shows all the potential it could have.

In the end, it's somewhat interesting in a way a history books is interesting if you like history...which I do.  It's not particularly bad since it's written well enough to retain my interest.  But it just adds nothing to the table and even what it does add doesn't elevate the book to must read status.  It's a shame, there's a germ of a good idea here it's just not executed in the best way.

6/10

No comments:

Post a Comment