Occultober Day 2: Dads vs. Zombies by Benjamin Wallace
Occultober Day 2—Dads vs. Zombies by Benjamin Wallace
Zombies hold an extremely important place in the paranormal fiction of the last couple of decades thanks in no small part to the works of brilliant authors such as Robert Kirkman and Laurell K Hamilton. One represents the zombie virus and one represents magical zombies. But the genre has grown so much since then and I’ll be introducing a lot of different types of zombie stories in the next 30 days. The first one is the very funny, but still powerful, Dads vs. Zombies.
As you can probably tell from the above, I really like the zombie apocalypse subgenre and read a lot of it. So, it is with some authority that I state that this was one of the best zombie apocalypse novels out there. It has a solid plot that would fit in nicely with any book in the genre (three men trying to reunite with their families as the world falls apart around them) but it’s the extraordinary level of humor that lifts this book to the top of the ladder.
The novel opens with our three dads (John, Chris and Erik) at the bowling alley where they have been forced to join a league by the much-hated president of their Home Owners Association. The three men don’t appear to like each other very much and it’s fairly clear that at least one of them (John) probably isn’t liked by much of anyone. The laughs start early in the chapter and continue to the end of the book. The banter between these three men is superb as Wallace draws out each man’s very distinctive character. Forced to walk home because they’ve been drinking, the zombie apocalypse comes to unlife around them and they don’t notice. By morning, the world has gone to hell and our three dads are trying to figure out how to find their families and reconnect with them.
Then the mistakes begin. In many of these novels the heroes are super smart and physically capable. They kill zombies better than Rambo. That does not describe our dads. John, especially, has an almost superhuman ability to do something stupid. And these blunders both add to the tension and create extraordinarily funny situations. Laugh out loud funny. Grab your sides funny. Rip yourself a new hernia funny. Get your eighteen-year-old son to start listening to the book with you funny. It’s that good.
It also took me in directions I didn’t expect several times. Part of this is because John continually does such comically stupid things. But many are also just good plot twists. I was sorry when the book came to an end because I just wasn’t done listening to it yet. Fortunately, I see on Audible that Dads vs. the World is coming so the humor will continue.
If you’re interested in Dads vs. Zombies, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...
