Nonbelieving Literati Sidetrack

I’m not allowed in bookstores. I’m not allowed on Amazon unless I have a gift card or am strictly using it as a reference for selecting books from the library. This is due to my inability to leave without spending upwards of $100 on books. It’s a compulsion. I love books and have the same reverence for books that Henry Bemis shows in Time Enough at Last. So it was unfortunate that the selection for this session of the Nonbelieving Literati was unavailable at my library;



However they did have, and what I will discuss instead, is David Wellington's zombie-apocalypse trilogy:

From Publishers Weekly: Fans will relish the monster mash finale, in which a Welsh sorcerer, a horde of animated mummies and a decomposing zombie army engage in a pyrotechnic firefight complete with heavy artillery.

Your first question could be why “Monster” and not “Zombie” for the book titles? The answer for that lies in the several twists that Wellington has added to the Zombie genre; conscious zombies, the cause for reanimation lying in something referred to as “the Source” rather than a virus, and reanimated Celtic Bog Mummy from Scotland who turns out to be Mael Mag Och, a druid who believes he is to be the final instrument of judgment on mankind.

In Monster Island we meet Gary, a medical student faced with the inevitable choice of either becoming a zombie or zombie food. Working on the theory that the brain becomes damaged through lack of oxygen between death and reanimation, he decides to try and retain his consciousness by keeping his body packed in ice and his brain oxygenated through using life support medical equipment stolen from the hospital. He awakens to find his experiment a success. He is one of (we later discover) three individuals to make the transition as a conscious zombie.

These three individuals are the driving force of the “Monster” aspect for the trilogy. They have to decide between either retaining their humanity or abandoning it. As Mael explains to Gary; “There’s no debate, Gary. This is what we are. Uamhas. There’s good in this world and there’s evil, and we’re evil. Now either come with me or leave me be, lad. There’s work to do.” The choices the characters make throughout the course of the trilogy span all shades of grey as well as black or white.

Initially “The Source” was ambiguous; it could be either natural or supernatural. The way it was initially described changed depending on the character experiencing or using it. However as the story progressed through the trilogy, the magical and supernatural aspects of it and the characters became clear. I was a little disappointed by this. The traditional viral explanation for zombieism always left the genre in the category of extremely-unlikely-but-ever-so-slightly-possible and made it that much more intriguing. While I appreciate the twists of the genre to create something new to explore, I still wanted there to be logical explanations, even if the explanations weren’t apparent to the character.


As the next book for the Literati is A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf and is ready for me to pick up at the library and I’m going on vacation in a couple weeks involving a long plane ride and plenty of time to read, I’m going to have to come up with a really good excuse for not reading it.**

Maybe I can blame the time spent on making Easy Cheesy Chili Dip.

** I fully intend to read it, but it’s Virgina Woolf for fuck sake. The last time I tried to read Virginia Woolf was Mrs. Dalloway and what a goddamn boring book that was!