Remember when I said last year that @KateSherrod had needed multiple showers after reading Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black books? That was NOTHING compared to the showers, brain bleach and other necessary mental hygiene adjustments one will need after reading Wendig’s zombie+vampire+zombie vampire novel Double Dead.
I am not kidding at all, this book is GROSS. But still somehow charming? Seriously, this was how I read this book – ”HAHAHAHAHAHA! Ew. Seriously, ew. But still. HAHAHAHAHA!”
Our hero (?) is Coburn, a “Noo Yawk” vampire that wakes up from a loooooong forced sleep to find that the world has been primarily taken over by zombies. There are few humans left, which kind of means REAL death for Coburn, since the “blood” of the walking dead isn’t sufficient to power him.
What’s a hungry vampire to do? Well, make friends with a fluffy little dog and somehow find himself as shepherd to a road trippin’ flock of blood donors, of course!
“Shhh,” he said. “Chill the fuck out, pup. Last thing I need is for you to call a gaggle of undead assholes my way. Is it a gaggle? What is it? It’s a school of fish. A murder of crows. A parliament of owls. What’s a bunch of fucking zombies? A cluster? A cadre? You know what? I’m going to go with a fuckbucket of zombies. Sound good to you, pup?”
Double Dead would have made my best of list for last year, if I’d read it before all those posts were written. As it stands, though, I’ll have to make sure to include it for 2013.
Definitely not for everyone, but if you don’t mind some stomach churning gore and intensely disgusting situations that will make you laugh at the same time as you’re trying not to puke – give this one a try.
If this book were a movie, it’d rate about 9/10 on the Faces of Death gore scale. I’ve learned that Wendig has a knack for making his readers uncomfortable, yet still keeps us coming back for more.
4.3/5 on my own personal book scale. Maybe higher since I’ll never look at WalMart the same way again.
