The Living Dead

By: George A. Romero, Daniel Kraus

Narrated by: Bruce Davison, Lori Cardille, Daniel Kraus

Length: 27 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

“A horror landmark and a work of gory genius.” (Joe Hill, New York Times best-selling author of The Fireman)

New York Times best-selling author Daniel Kraus completes George A. Romero's brand-new masterpiece of zombie horror, the massive novel left unfinished at Romero's death!

George A. Romero invented the modern zombie with Night of the Living Dead, creating a monster that has become a key part of pop culture. Romero often felt hemmed in by the constraints of film-making. To tell the story of the rise of the zombies and the fall of humanity the way it should be told, Romero turned to fiction. Unfortunately, when he died, the story was incomplete.

Enter Daniel Kraus, co-author, with Guillermo del Toro, of the New York Times best seller The Shape of Water (based on the Academy Award-winning movie) and Trollhunters (which became an Emmy Award-winning series), and author of The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch (an Entertainment Weekly Top 10 Book of the Year). A lifelong Romero fan, Kraus was honored to be asked, by Romero's widow, to complete The Living Dead.

Set in the present day, The Living Dead is an entirely new tale, the story of the zombie plague as George A. Romero wanted to tell it.

It begins with one body.

A pair of medical examiners find themselves battling a dead man who won’t stay dead.

It spreads quickly.

In a Midwestern trailer park, a Black teenage girl and a Muslim immigrant battle newly-risen friends and family. On a US aircraft carrier, living sailors hide from dead ones while a fanatic makes a new religion out of death. At a cable news station, a surviving anchor keeps broadcasting while his undead colleagues try to devour him. In DC, an autistic federal employee charts the outbreak, preserving data for a future that may never come.

Everywhere, people are targeted by both the living and the dead.

We think we know how this story ends.

We. Are. Wrong.

©2020 George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus (P)2020 Macmillan Audio

Everything a Romero fan could ask for.

You can tell that Daniel Kraus was really trying to keep the spirit of George Romero in this book. It's delightful, as much as a book about the end of the world as we know it, the rebirth of that world, and the unsteady and calamitous first steps of humanity afterwards can be. The performances by both readers is great, especially when voicing one of the book's Trump-like antagonists, and enhances the experience measurably.

Bottom line, if you like zombie fiction, this is a must have. If you like stories about suffering and redemption and loss and hope, then this is a must have. You won't regret it.

Zombie, Zombie..

It almost felt like Romero was still amongst us living dead. in true fashion this book points out only to well the nightmare that is humanity.

The only thing I wished this book had would be a full cast, having only 2 actors (who did a fantastic job 👏) just wasn't enough to give this work justice.

Overall I had a grand time with this and only feel completely depressed because there may never be another..

Not Romeros best.

This is not Romeris best. I put I right there with Survival of the Dead and Diary of the Dead.

It starts out well enough but it is very long. And gets way into to much character development. But that's expected for a book this long. At about 1/2 way through I began to lose interest and at 3/4 the way I was bored out of my mind. The last few chapters got my attention as I knew I was nearing the end. I will not spoil it for you. But for me the ending was very disappointing.

It was too long, too much character development and the story meandered just too much. Romero created the genre and the genre will go on. With other writers and storylines to carry it forward.

Zombie rats?

I hate to say it, the epilogue was the best part of the book. The first half of the story is classic Romero, it starts with patient zero at the beginning of the apocalypse. We meet the main characters and we go back and forth as we learn about their tails of survival. Then the hook takes a strange shift and jumps 10-15 years into the future. This ruined the story for me. But alas, I’m still glad the book exists even if it wasn’t completely Romero’s creation. It was fun revisiting the world he created…even if I don’t agree with the idea of zombie rats.

This was awesome!

This is my new favorite zombie everything. What a story, listen to it, you will get wrapped up. Exciting, gory, tender, scary, all the feels. I will listen to it again.

Mixed feelings.

Romero had a lot to say in the way of social commentary. Sometimes it was subtle, sometimes it was very blatant (storming the tenements in the original Dawn of the Dead). There's a lot of that here, and sometimes it's done well but most of the time it's ham fisted and tiring.

There are some real gems in this, and most of them are at the front. The morgue scene and the trailer park are the absolute best. If the whole book was filled with this then it would be nothing but 5 stars.

The book gets overly bogged down in places with elaborate backstories that kill the pacing, slowing things down like those famous tar pits in LA, making it chore to get through. The book gets wobbly at the end, kind of anti climactic. I stopped caring about many of the characters by the end and several died stupidly. Things don't fall apart, they fail spectacularly. Everything is inevitable, self destructive and pessimistic. I don't buy that and found things disappointing and somewhat unbelievable, which is a funny thing to say in a zombie novel.

Can't give it a thumbs up or down.

Great listen

The book was very good. At some points, it did feel very political, but then again, that is the world we do live in. One aspect could've used a bit more research won't say don't wanna spoil. Very much felt like a feminist/leftist book. If you can look past that, it was very good.

Zombies and Social Issues

Zombies were satisfactory. Social Issues were hamfisted in there, each one was obvious and lacked any subtly, especially the last major character introduced.

Good story

Was not what I thought it would be.
Well worth the listen I think.
Thanks

What to say

I suppose what I can offer for a review is that it's just sort of "meh."
I don't care about any of the political things people are mentioning, and there isn't as much of it as some make it sound like. Though. I will say two things about that:
1 When it did come up, it was sloppy and cumbersome rather than insightful or original.
2 George's politics are widely known already, and all that matters to me when reading or listening to a book is the story, &/or performance of a narrator.
The narrators do a fair job overall, and the story is okay. Both have ups and downs where it feels like marks are missed, or are nailed perfectly. in fairness to the performers, they're probably doing as directed, which probably means they're doing an excellent job in that respect. The story won't get such excuses from me, because I simply expected better.
overall, I don't want a refund, but I wouldn't pay for it again as I've paid for other novels or movies George was involved in or had directly created.
I wish I could say that I absolutely loved it.