Escape from Zombie City

by Ray Wallace
Published by Apex Book Company


RAY WALLACE hails from the Tampa, FL area and is the author of The Nameless (Black Death Books). More than two dozen of his short stories have appeared in such magazines and anthologies as The Zombie Fee: VOL. 1, The Blackest Death: VOL. 1&2, and Erotic Fantasy: Tales of the Paranormal. A few of his other stories have appeared at The Chiaroscuro website where he took first place in their second annual fiction contest. He also wrote a long running book review column for The Twilight Showcase webzine and now writes reviews for Chizine and SFReader.com. His most recent novel is Escape From Zombie City.

In the past few days, I have been bombed; fallen to my death on top of a zombie; mauled by zombies in an elevator; captured by religious fanatics for the sake of sacrifice only to be bombed again; trapped into a car and eaten to death; shot execution style by the military; shot off the top of a building; trapped on a boat, pulled under by zombies and eaten to death while drowning; and turned into a zombie. All of this is thanks to Ray Wallace's Escape from Zombie City. Escape from Zombie City is a story in which the reader is periodically given choices, and these choices lead to different endings. Most of these endings result in the death of the reader, but one leads to ultimate survival. This book is built around the model of the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books popular with tweens in the 1980s and 90s, but with far grislier content.

While the concept of a CYOA novel for adults is not new, this is the first attempt I know of using zombies, which seems like a natural fit. Zombie tales, be they fiction, films or otherwise, center around the choices made by the protagonists attempting to escape or simply survive. These choices sometimes lead to freedom, but usually lead to one or many of the main characters being eaten alive. In Escape from Zombie City, you face the same fate. The choices readers make can lead to freedom, but usually lead to the reader's demise. As the series title suggests, there literally is only one way out.

There are a few issues with the various plots. For example, in one narrative, the reader's gun gets stolen, but a few pages later, the reader uses it to beat off a zombie. Other narratives are quite short, the length of a short story, which makes for a disappointing read. But of course, that's all part of the adventure. Reader's can learn from their mistakes, flip back a few pages, make better decisions, and survive. That, or they can die an equally horrible death. Wallace makes sure that happens a lot.

All in all, the cleverness of the novel and its nostalgic throwback to CYOA novels more than makes up for any disappointments the reader might have with the book. Ray Wallace's Escape from Zombie City is a really fun read and welcome addition to zombie literature.

Buy it here.

Reviewed By Joshua Gage

Joshua Gage is an ornery curmudgeon from Cleveland. His first full-length collection, "breaths", is available from VanZeno Press. Intrinsic Night, a collaborative project he wrote with J. E. Stanley, was recently published by Sam’s Dot Publishing. He is a graduate of the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Naropa University. He has a penchant for Pendleton shirts, rye whiskey and any poem strong enough to yank the breath out of his lungs. He stomps around Cleveland in a purple bathrobe where he hosts the monthly Deep Cleveland Poetry hour and enjoys the beer at Brew Kettle. Hooks and Books livejournal.com

I Shall Wear Midnight

by Terry Pratchett
Publisher HarperCollins Publishers

Terry Pratchett should need no introduction. He is a knighted author of Fantasy, most famous for his Discworld series, which has inspired everything from cartoons, BBC movies, figurines, t-shirts, postage stamps, street names in a Somerset city, their own convention, and even a line of beer. I Shall Wear Midnight concludes his Discworld based young adult series focused on the adventures of Tiffany Aching in a dark and thrilling novel.

Tiffany Aching is now a fifteen-year-old witch on the Chalk, an area known for soft soil and sheep. She is treated with respect, as any witch ought to be, but also with suspicion. Things get worse for her when the Baron, who owns most of the land, dies under her care and his nurse accuses her of black magic. She is sent on a mission to find the Baron's son, whom she saved in The Wee Free Men from the Queen of the Fairies. She was rumored to have feelings for the Baron’s son, even going so far as to use the necklace which he gave her to ensnare the Hiver in A Hat Full of Sky, and his fiancé, Letitia, and her mother, who is a Dutchess and makes it clear to everyone in the vicinity that this is her rank.

On the coach ride to Ankh-Morpork, the Discworld equivalent to London or New York, she meets The Cunning Man, a conjured spirit of a murdered Omnian witch hunter who is occasionally resurrected throughout the history of Discworld to hunt and pursue witches, fueled by the deep seeded fear and mistrust of the members of their communities.

Tiffany is helped by a few of the witches in Ankh Morpork, including the famous Mrs. Proust, who runs Boffo’s joke shop, and Eskarina Smith, who is the first ever woman bequeathed a wizard’s staff, and thus lives on the borders between witch magic and wizard magic. All of them are aware of The Cunning Man’s presence, but it pursues only Tiffany, who must ultimately battle him to the death in the final chapters.

As with many young adult series, as the characters grow and mature, so to do their worlds and the problems they must face. Tiffany Aching deals, within the first few chapters of the book, with alcoholism, domestic violence, infanticide and suicide, which is a far cry from slamming a river goblin in the face with a frying pan. Readers who have grown with the series will not be shocked, and indeed may champion Tiffany on these new adventures, but readers uninitiated may want to start with The Wee Free Men and work their way up through Tiffany’s life. Still, this book certainly could stand alone, and deals readers a more realistic version of young adult life than many novels currently available. Though the themes are occasionally dark and mature, this is still a very entertaining and thrilling read, heavily spiced with Pratchett’s trademark humor.

Buy it here.

Reviewed by Joshua Gage.

Joshua Gage is an ornery curmudgeon from Cleveland. His first full-length collection, "breaths", is available from VanZeno Press. Intrinsic Night, a collaborative project he wrote with J. E. Stanley, was recently published by Sam’s Dot Publishing. He is a graduate of the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Naropa University. He has a penchant for Pendleton shirts, rye whiskey and any poem strong enough to yank the breath out of his lungs. He stomps around Cleveland in a purple bathrobe where he hosts the monthly Deep Cleveland Poetry hour and enjoys the beer at Brew Kettle.

The Wee Free Men: The Beginning

by Terry Pratchett
Publisher HarperCollins Publishers

Terry Pratchett should need no introduction. He is a knighted author of Fantasy, most famous for his Discworld series, which has inspired everything from cartoons, BBC movies, figurines, t-shirts, postage stamps, street names in a Somerset city, their own convention, and even a line of beer. The Wee Free Men: The Beginning is a collection of two of his young adult novels, The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky. These two novels follow the young protagonist, Tiffany Aching, through her adventures and lessons in becoming a witch.

In The Wee Free Men, Tiffany is nine-years-old, and works on her parents farm on The Chalk, making cheese, watching her younger brother, and helping take care of the livestock, mostly sheep. One day, she and her brother are attacked by a river goblin named Jenny Greenteeth, which Tiffany soundly defeats using a frying pan. Such actions do not go unnoticed, and under the tutelage of an experienced witch named Miss Tick and her talking toad, Tiffany learns that she has all the makings of a witch. When her brother is stolen by the Queen of the Fairies, Tiffany takes it upon herself to rescue him, armed only with a dictionary, a frying pan, and the help of the Nac Mac Feegle, tiny blue kilted pictsies with a penchant for drinking Special Sheep Linament and more than willing "to give any scunner a full of heid, ye kennit," even if that means fighting themselves, which they often do.

A Hat Full of Sky features Tiffany two years later, when she is apprenticed to Miss Level, a witch with one mind and two bodies. She learns that being a witch involves very little Queen of the Fairy fighting, and mostly taking care of those too old, too young, too sick or just ignorant to take care of themselves. Tiffany also finds herself battling with a hiver, a disembodied spirit that takes over the bodies of powerful beings in the same way a hermit crab takes over a shell, using them to their full potential until they are completely spent, then moving on once they die. Tiffany also finds herself pitted against a pack of the vilest, cunning and dangerous creatures know to man-- teenage girls. Led by a fellow apprentice named Annagramma, who spells magic with a ‘k’ and believes she is above all menial tasks Tiffany and Miss Levels perform. Through it all, Tiffany is once again defended and aided by the Nac Mac Feegle, who adopt Tiffany as their hag, and who are placed under a geas (a very important obligation, not a large bird) to save at any cost.

Both books have Pratchett's trademark comedy and satire imbued in them, as well as allusions that would make any adult reader chuckle along with the young ones. Through this humor, Pratchett offers readers young and old alike lessons and morals about life. For example, Miss Tick's lesson to Tiffany: "If you trust in yourself... and believe in your dreams... and follow your star... you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy." Pratchett clearly aims to take the traditional fantasy novel or Disney princess movie and flip it on its head, creating a very intriguing protagonist who readers of any age will enjoy.

Buy it here.

Review by Joshua Gage

Joshua Gage is an ornery curmudgeon from Cleveland. His first full-length collection, "breaths", is available from VanZeno Press. Intrinsic Night, a collaborative project he wrote with J. E. Stanley, was recently published by Sam’s Dot Publishing. He is a graduate of the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Naropa University. He has a penchant for Pendleton shirts, rye whiskey and any poem strong enough to yank the breath out of his lungs. He stomps around Cleveland in a purple bathrobe where he hosts the monthly Deep Cleveland Poetry hour and enjoys the beer at Brew Kettle.