Mike’s Reviews > Zombies: The Recent Dead > Status Update

Disarmed and Dangerous by Tim Waggoner: 2/5 Not at all funny, and rushed worldbuilding.

The Zombie Prince by Kit Reed: 1/5 Cliched, badly written, and boring as hell.

Selected Scenes from the End of the World by Brian Keene: 2/5 The scenes are too short, they feel out of context, and the dialogue is awful.

Glorietta by Gary A. Braunbeck: 5/5 Unique format, and way darker than any of the more violent stories.

Farewell, My Zombie by Francessca Lia Block: 5/5 Excellent voice, and great use of the unreliable narrator.

Trinkets by Tobias S. Buckell: 2/5 Cut off before anything really interesting happened, and purple prose.

Dead Man's Land by David Wellington: 4/5 Great protagonist, story hard to follow.

Bitter Grounds by Neil Gaiman: 3/5 Very bland protagonist, but Gaiman is imaginative as always.

Beautiful White Bodies by Alice Sola Kim: 4/5 A little amateurish in style, but I liked the central metaphor, and it was a lot more original than most of this anthology has been.

Lie Still, Becalmed by Steve Duffy: 2/5 Not as predictable as I expected, but still really forgettable.

The Great Wall by Max Brooks: 3/5 An interesting premise, but it cuts off too quickly and without enough explanation.

First Kisses from Beyond the Grave: 3/5 I honestly have no idea what the tone of this was supposed to be, how seriously I was supposed to take it. The protagonist has a good voice, though.

I'm working on Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed. It's kind of predictable and clichéd, to be honest; Steve Duffy doesn't have much new to offer here.

The Naming of Parts by Tim Lebbon: 4/5 Pretty good concept, and quite well-written. Probably would've been a 5 if not for the predictable ending.

Dating Secrets of the Dead by David Prill: 1/5 Stupid, not nearly as funny as it thinks it is, and boring.

Still working on Naming Parts. This is very Gaiman-esque, and that's definitely a good thing here.

Naming Parts by Tim Lebbon is pretty good. Jack read a lot younger than twelve at first, but it's less of a problem now, and the premise is pretty engaging.

Things He Said by Michael Marshall Smith: 3/5 Probably would've been a 2, if not for the clever ending. This was fairly well-written, but boring as shit.

Twisted by Kevin Veale: 2/5

This story mentions a guy 'tracing mobious strips' in the air with his knife. That should tell you just about all you need to know about how terribly written this story was. Needless to say, I decided not to finish it.