Zone One

Zombie apocalypse novel about humanity's attempts at reconstructing society in NYC, from the viewpoint of one Mark Spitz, a young man who managed to survive Last Night and ends up a Sweeper for the military, dispensing with the straggler zombies who seem to be no active threat. But maybe they are.

There is a lot of naval-gazing and flashbacking. Though this takes place ostensibly over three days, the story is nonlinear in how the tale of Mark Spitz (not his real name; we never know that) experienced the apocalypse. There were moments where I had to concentrate on when things were happening, because it felt as though the story jumped around incoherently sometimes. And just when the excrement really starts hitting the air conditioning, getting really exciting–the book ends.

This is unendingly frustrating for me.

The prose is beautifully written. It's clever, intelligent, and even I had to whip out my dictionary upon occasion. Colson proves he's obviously a talented, intelligent writer with a wry wit.

That being said, this is primarily a novel for litfic lovers. I firmly believe horror can be a beautiful, intelligent, well-written genre. But this wasn't really horror as much as it was litfic using horror tropes. And litfic is always iffy for me, but I liked this more than I usually would like litfic.