Dust of the Dead
John Palisano
Samhain Publishing
June 2, 2015
Reviewed by Tim Potter
With the novel Dust of the Dead, author John Palisano takes on zombies with some new ideas, but also some mixed results. The premise is a solid, interesting take on traditional zombie lore. The spreading of the disease is mainly done through the inhalation of “dust” of the reanimated dead, the portions of the dead that have grown old and dry and has been sloughed off like dead skin. Don’t worry, the dead still want to attack and feast on the living, but the main threat turns out to be their “dust”. It’s an interesting idea taken, likely, from the fact that bone dust from corpses is very dangerous to real human beings and can carry all sorts of diseases. When the story zeros in on this idea the story is a success.
For the first half of the book, the idea of the “dust” gets lost among some other ideas that don’t have the same impact. The narrator of this first-person tale is Mike Lane, a believable and authentic character, though his motivation is questionable until almost exactly midway through the story. At that time the character of Jenny is introduced and Mike’s priorities become clear and finally make sense. Jenny is a strong supporting character, as is Adam late in the book, but they are the only two supporting players that ever get fleshed out.
The story begins with it’s focus on the Reclamation Crew, a group of federal employees whose job it is to kill, or reclaim, those people who have been reanimated after death. Often this entails digging up buried caskets, in which those already interred have reawakened. The Crew is an interesting idea, though one wonders why such a job would so underfunded and providing so little in the way of support or training. One answer is possible that it has been a number of years since the plague started and was controlled and people seem to want to act like it never happened. There are still Zoms, short for zombies, of course, but society has returned to normal for the most part.
And then things start to go crazy. The Zoms are changing, becoming more and more like normal humans, and harder to tell apart from them. This presents a great dilemma for the characters: How do we know if someone is a Zom and how sure do we have to be to reclaim them? The morality play is sharp, though it doesn’t last through the whole novel. The character’s journey through the second half of the novel is high on action and more traditional zombie elements, but still manages to amp up the tension. Once the 50% make is passed the story begins to take a much tighter hold on the reader. The ending is fairly standard for a horror survival tale, though it comes at exactly the right moment. What starts out as an average zombie story manages to build up some real momentum into an ending that will leave you wanting more.
A copy of the book was provided by a site sponsor
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