This book was an impulse buy for me. I actually picked it up the Monday after it was published at a comic shop in downtown Seattle. Oddly enough, the shop has a whole section on zombies, and if you’re in the area, I definitely recommend Golden Age Comics at Pike Place Market.
Getting back to the task at hand: this book is very straight-forward in its approach. It is a book of notes and photographs from the zombie apocalypse. Lost Zombies is an online community that has been creating an alternate reality game around a present where zombies are real, and the people in their community (the ones who sent in images for this book) are the survivors. Alternate reality games can get pretty intense, and it appears that many of the members of Lost Zombies take their roles seriously.
I was impressed with the variety of materials people used in their notes: pieces of cardboard, Polaroid photographs, childhood drawings… Many of the notes sent chills up my spine. This alternate reality focuses on a flu-like virus spreading through the population in a matter of months, before people are rounded up and sent to a place called Camp Saint Teresa. Teresa is where the zombies first break out and start wreaking havoc on the general population.
The book documents things like wives being worried for their husbands, young adults having to kill their parents, and people barricading themselves into houses to try to hide from the zombies now roaming their streets. The notes are generally hand written, which makes it all the more real for the reader. The effect is chilling.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It was a very, very quick read; I think I plowed through it in about fifteen minutes or so. For me, that makes it enjoyable and something that I will definitely take the time to read again and again.
This sounds like a great read, Kit! I’ll definitely be checking this out. It reminds me of this one book I saw that was a diary of a zombie outbreak. I wish I could remember the title, but if I see it I’ll probably post a picture of it or maybe do a review for it.
Excellent review as usual 🙂
Um, this book sounds *amazing.* And I’m not surprised about the zombie section of the comic book shop AT ALL. Walking Dead is a huge hit!