The current surge in zombie fiction continues with David Wellington’s ambitious novel MONSTER ISLAND. The difference is it gives the “more brains” genre some actual brains.

Originally published as a web serial, Wellington’s first in a zombie trilogy (to be followed by MONSTER NATION and MONSTER PLANET) details the plight of a former U.N. weapons inspector named Dekalb. Several years after the zombie epidemic has decimated much of the Western hemisphere, he and his daughter take refuge in Somalia. But when the village leader requires AIDS medication that may only be available at the U.N. headquarters, Dekalb secures his daughter’s safety by going home again, with the aid of several heavily armed Somalian schoolgirls, trained to introduce rapid-fire bullets to zombie skull from a sniper’s distance.

So it’s like escape to New York, where they’re greeted by a teeming mass of the hungry undead. And if that’s all there was to MONSTER ISLAND, it would be like every other story you think of when you hear “zombie.” But Wellington also alternates that narrative with one of Gary, a former doctor who froze himself before he turned zombie, and thus, has retained all his thinking and communications faculties. He acts like a human, yet looks like one of them. Where do you go when you don’t easily fit in to either side of a war?

And there are mummies. While I think that matter of cross-pollination alone is genius, Wellington really should be commended for not settling for aping George Romero movies. Though that obviously provided the template (as it has for all things zombie ever since), Wellington isn’t in it just for the gore, which would get old fast. He infuses this pulse-pounder with pathos and other realistic emotions that carry a weight of plausability –not to mention flashes of wit (”You could cut the irony with a spork”) – bringing it far above the level of just an average, everyday effort. The man holds a master’s degree in creative writing, and it clearly shows in his prose, to where the damn thing – dare I say it? – even flirts with being literary.

I’ve admired Wellington’s short stories in such collections as THE UNDEAD and BRAINCHILD, but standing out on his own, he proves himself the real deal. Horror fans – and even non-horror fans who can’t resist cat-and-mouse adventure – will be marooned happily on this ISLAND. I, for one, look forward to seeing where the trilogy goes from here. –Rod Lott

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