Was 2011 a bad year for the horror novel? I’ve yet to read any of the nominees for the 2012 Bram Stoker Award for best novel except Flesh Eaters by Joe McKinney, the winner, and I find myself puzzled. Was this really the best the year had to offer? It’s a competent enough zombie novel, but nothing special.
Flesh Eaters tells the story of the loss of Houston, Texas, to a close series of tropical storms, one after another hitting the city until it has essentially become part of the Gulf of Mexico. As was the case with Hurricane Katrina and the tragedy of New Orleans in 2005, Houston is not effectively evacuated, and is largely cut off from the rest of civilization in the aftermath of the storms. This isolation becomes considerably more pronounced when the combination of filthy conditions, flooding by heavily polluted water, and the proximity of thousands of people gives rise to a new disease. This disease does not cause the dead to walk, but it does cause those infected to lose most of their brain function and to seek to eat human flesh — in other words, they become zombies. In inhibiting brain function, the disease also makes the zombies almost immune to injury except for the destruction of the brain, most easily by a shot to the head.
The story told in this novel focuses on Eleanor Norton, a police officer involved with the portion of the Houston police force changed with handling emergency conditions — precisely like severe storms. Norton is intent on ensuring the survival of her husband and her nearly-teenage daughter, both of whom do not have quite her level of courage and fortitude. Jim and Madison have a great deal of difficulty maintaining their home after the first and second storms, when they are housebound. But things get worse after the third storm tears them from their home and sets them afloat in a rowboat on filthy water filled with corpses.
The other major character in this novel is Captain Mark Shaw, leader of the emergency division of the Houston police force. Shaw is a dedicated officer, one for whom honor trumps all, and he is devastated by his inability to ensure the safety of Houston’s residents. He is loath to report to his superiors outside Houston that zombies have begun to roam the streets, knowing that the news will cause those outside Houston to make it difficult for survivors to escape the ruined city. And despite his honor, he sees an opportunity in this horrible situation in the form of a submerged bank vault and the ready availability, purely by accident, of some underwater explosives.
There are no surprises here. This novel follows the pattern of every disaster movie you’ve ever seen, with the situation getting increasingly worse, the good mostly surviving and the bad pretty much universally getting their comeuppance. Because the novel is predictable, there is little tension in it. I would probably have ceased reading it halfway through if it weren’t that I knew it had won the Stoker; I kept expecting something truly interesting to emerge, but nothing ever did. Perhaps the problem is that Flesh Eaters is the third book in a quartet; perhaps the Stoker was awarded to McKinney as a way of honoring the entire project, instead of just this single novel. I cannot recommend Flesh Eaters as a good read standing on its own, however, and am not sufficiently impressed to pick up the two earlier books, Dead City and Apocalypse of the Dead, or the forthcoming The Zombie King. I’m disappointed.
Dead World — (2006-2014) Publisher: Battered by five cataclysmic hurricanes in three weeks, the Texas Gulf Coast and half of the Lone Star State is reeling from the worst devastation in history. Thousands are dead or dying — but the worst is only beginning. Amid the wreckage, something unimaginable is happening: a deadly virus has broken out, returning the dead to life — with an insatiable hunger for human flesh… The Nightmare Begins Within hours, the plague has spread all over Texas. San Antonio police officer Eddie Hudson finds his city overrun by a voracious army of the living dead. Along with a small group of survivors, Eddie must fight off the savage horde in a race to save his family… There’s no place to run. No place to hide. The zombie horde is growing as the virus runs rampant. Eddie knows he has to find a way to destroy these walking horrors… but he doesn’t know the price he will have to pay…
It could be that they are taking a roundabout way to honor the whole project, but I wonder if there isn’t something more emotional happening here. In the 1990s people began writing about Viet Nam and it felt like folks were “breaking the silence,” so to speak. Later, books that referred back to the airplane attack on the World Trade Towers carried emotional resonance regardless of how good they were in other ways. I think Katrina left a big mark on the nation’s psyche and we bestow gravitas, in a way, on any book that addresses or an event like it… even if that gravitas is not completely deserved.
Yuck! I don’t even want to visit the site today because of that awful cover art!! I’m outta here!!!
Kat, squeamish? You? I am shocked.
Marion, I’m actually quite squeamish when it comes to visual stimuli. I think that’s why I like to read and I don’t watch many movies or TV shows. I still have to cover my hands with my eyes for the scary parts!
I did make myself get over some of this so that I could do animal research for my degree, and I’m not afraid of needles. I just can’t look at gory stuff when humans are involved.
We’ve been hearing for (seems like) years how zombies have replaced / are replacing vamps as the great new thing, but all I’ve managed to read so far was a couple of chapters (prior to ditching) of a Mira Grant novel (whose work as Seanan McGuire I love) and a single so-so zombie crime-fighting novel set in a city of the undead on an alternate plane.
The yuck factor is just too great, and zombies as a species (?) completely lack any essential mystique. By their very nature, such characters cut out a whole slew of possible plots. It would be interesting to know how wide the possible readership for that type of fiction really is (speaking as a fantasy/SF reader who used to actively avoid horror before the genres began to merge).
@Tizz–I have the same problem with zombies. Some people say they represent the soul-deadening impact of conspicuous consumption, but I have a hard time making that fit. Vampires, whether I like them or not, have minds, thoughts, desires and usually an agenda, which makes them more interesting.
I agree, Tizz and Marion!
However, I did enjoy Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris, which has zombie-type characters.