Monster Island

I've never read any zombie novels before, but that's mostly because I've never even been into zombie movies.  I'd watch them now and then, but the characters in most of them were so stupid that I couldn't stand it.  "Oh hurr duurrrrr, what's behind this door in this dark room?" It made me shake my head in embarrassment.

But Monster Island surprised me.  The characters were pretty smart for the most part.  There were times when the girl soldiers were acting like the zombies could plan and be organized, but the author addressed this as a flaw so I could kinda buy it.  I think my favorite character was Gary, at first anyway.  The idea of a thinking zombie is cool and something I rarely see, and the author's take on it was fresh.  The way his zombie-ness was described (hunger, just death in general) was very well done and made me sympathize with him.

It was when Gary got his weird psychic powers that I started to go, "What?"  I guess it shouldn't have bugged me as much as it did, but t seemed like a bit much to give zombies psychic powers.  I know that it was explained pretty well so it didn't come completely out of nowhere, but zombies are zombies to me.  Sentient ones are ok, but that's about all that my brain can accept.

I liked the colony of humans that had to live in the tunnels.  It seemed like something that would really happen.  People would try to scrape up what was left of society and make the most of what they had. 

Why are Zombies so Popular?

The popularity of the zombie horror genre has skyrocketed in recent years.  Why?  I believe that it's so huge because there's a sense of Uncanny Valley.  They look human enough, but they aren't quite there anymore and it's super creepy.  Or maybe it's some sort of wish fullfillment.  If a major apololypse does happen, we like to think that we'll be among the survivors. The survivors in most zombie movies are so stupid that it's a wonder they survived that long.  The audience recognizes this and thinks "Oh, well I'm smarter than that so I could survive too!"

Or maybe it's just that we all just love to watch a good old shoot 'em up.

Frankenstein

I first read Frankenstein in 11th grade for English class.  I didn't like it.  It was too formally written, which caused me to read slower, which in turn reduced my free time after I got my homework done.  I hardly paid any attention to the story and only remebered the key plot points so I would pass my quizzes.  I was a bad reader in high school.

Then when I heard that I was supposed to read Frankenstein again for Literature of Horror, Fantasy and Sci Fi class, I promised myself to actually read and involve myself in the book.  Needless to say, my second time reading it went a lot better.  Even though it was still slow going because of the formal language, I took my time and read slow enough to understand it.  It's still not my favorite book in the world and I probably wouldn't read it again on my own, but for a school assigned book it wasn't bad.

I thought some parts of the story just dragged on and on.  For example, when Victor goes on holiday with Henry and visits different places, the book goes into deep detail about each of the places he visits.  It just seems like unnecessary fluff.  Victor is also kind of a angsty brat. There were points when I was just thinking, “SHUT UP VICTOR.  I already know how much your life sucks, you don’t have to bring it up again!”  I don’t know, I just found it really hard to relate to Victor’s character.  Especially since it’s his own fault that everything around him falls apart.

The monster surprised me.  The only version of the monster I’d known was the hulking, moaning and groaning green guy with bolts through his neck.  While I assumed that it wasn’t true to the original version, I didn’t expect the monster to speak better English than me.  And really, it was the monster that won most of my sympathy.  Yeah, he killed people and that kind of sucks, but nobody, NOBODY would have anything to do with him.  Even his own creator was terrified to confront him.   I can’t even imagine the loneliness.

The part that really miffed me was when the monster said, “I’ll be with you on your wedding night,” and Victor assumes that the monster’s going to kill HIM.  I was thinking, “Dude, the monster’s been killing off the people you love.  Don’t you think you should be worried about your wife?”

Overall, a decent read but it’s better as a “school book” than a “read for fun” book.