It’s a testament to the skill of Daniel Kraus as an author that I couldn’t pick apart which elements of this were remnants of the unfinished material from George A. Romero and which aspects were things Kraus brought to the table.
There is a lot of book here, spanning from the very beginning of the zombie apocalypse fans of Night of the Living Dead are quite familiar with all the way to the interval when society begins to rebuild a hopefully better civilization from the ashes and decay left behind after a decade and a half of zombies and struggling to survive.
The story is told by focusing on a handful of specific characters and showcasing their efforts to navigate the nightmare their world has become, during different periods of the apocalypse and the aftermath. It shouldn’t need to be said, but not everyone survives to the end…or at least they don’t survive in the way you might hope.
Filled with the scathing, and not always subtle social commentary you should expect from Romero…this book tells us more about ourselves and the world we’re currently living in than it does about the ghouls and how they came about.
It was additionally a nice touch that there were chapters dedicated to showcasing the internal landscape of the zombies, making them out to be more than simply the mindless killing machines we often consider them to be when we’re watching the movies. Of course, fans of Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead should know that Romero very clearly had it in mind that there was still something going on behind those dead, white eyes.