A slightly-below-average collection of short stories about the undead. I am disappointed that I did not like it, as the premise of the book was intriguing. The stories try to introduce zombies into a number of historical events – an offshoot of the bubonic plague, the cause of the Great Fire of Chicago, the inspiration for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, etc. – and consequently the efforts are rather creative, and this should be commended.

Unfortunately, many of the ideas fall flat or lack the proper execution, and most of them I've already forgotten. 'Junebug' was the only one which I considered genuinely disturbing (and it wasn't the zombies in that story that provide the horror). 'The Anatomy Lesson' and 'A Touch of the Divine' were good stories, and there were others for which I appreciated the creativity and the ambition if not the finished story itself. 'Theatre is Dead', which sees a Shakespeare play go horribly wrong, and 'Society and Sickness', a sort of Pride and Prejudice parody in which a young woman's parents bemoan the rise of the undead as it decreases the number of eligible suitors for their daughter, both fall into this category. Overall, I don't regret reading this anthology but it didn't impress me either. ( )

History Is UNdead!

Zombies have coexisted with humans since before the birth of h. sapiens – that is, if we’re to believe the team of “crack historians” behind History Is Dead: A Zombie Anthology, edited by Kim Paffenroth (2007). And why not, when believing is such bloody good fun?

While at least half of the twenty stories found in History Is Dead take place in the past 200 years – with America and Europe proving popular settings – the rest stretch as far back as the Pleistocene epoch. (“This Reluctant Prometheus,” in which members of the homo ergaster species become infected with zombie-ism after consuming an infected wooly mammoth, is one of my favorites.) Zombies are credited for bringing humans the gift of fire, rescuing a Viking kingdom from insurrection, inspiring budding horror author Mary Shelly, and administering vigilante justice to Jack the Ripper. They appear on Civil War battlefields and in East End slums. They infiltrate the United States government in their quest for gooooold. (An “Indian” curse gone weird. Don’t ask.) The Great Fire of Chicago? Started by zombies, the first of which was created when Biela’s Comet rained a mysterious green rock onto (and into) Pat “Paddy” O’Leary’s Aunt Sophie. Zombies, it seems, are all around us.

As always, anthologies are difficult to review, since you’re apt to take a shining to some pieces more than others. Overall, History Is Dead is a quick, enjoyable, entertaining read – perfect for a morbid Saturday afternoon at the beach. I polished it off in under a week, which is near-record speed for me. Though they share a common theme, each story in this collection is unique. In some, zombies make a brief, even ancillary cameo – while in others they serve as the story’s protagonists. A bloody, gory, over-the-top collection of shoot-‘em-up zombie tales this is not.

In fact, it could be argued that zombies aren’t even the scariest monsters to be found within the pages of HISTORY IS DEAD. Take, for example, “Junebug” – which comes with a major trigger warning – in which a preacher (at the End Times Church, natch) uses the looming zombie apocalypse as a pretense to sexually enslave one of his young parishioners (June or “Junebug” of the story’s title). After several months of living with him – with her parents’ permission, ostensibly to babysit his children due to his wife’s illness – she becomes pregnant from the repeated rapes. Cast out by the preacher, she finds no solace from her family, as they blame her for “seducing” her rapist. June and her sole defender, brother Ethan, ultimately meet a gory end – and yet, even at their “worst,” the reader has more sympathy for the zombie siblings than for their human victims.

I found a similar pleasure in “Awake in the Abyss,” which finds Jack the Ripper’s “canonical five” victims - Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly - along with a sixth woman, narrator Nelly, awakening from the grave in order to avenge their deaths…as only zombies can. I bet you never thought you’d find yourself rooting so enthusiastically for the zombies, eh?

http://www.easyvegan.info/2012/07/16/history-is-dead-a-zombie-anthology-edited-b... ( )

http://www.darkscribemagazine.com/reviews/history-is-dead-a-zombie-anthology-edi... ( )