The Thirteenth Step: Zombie Recovery by Michele W. Miller Review

Book review: The Thirteenth Step: Zombie Recovery

Audiobooks also available here (UK) and at the Amazon.com presence here (US).

The humor is subtly satirical, the horror starkly brutal, and the writing impresses. If we're to judge a book by its cover, the novel's title plays with the concept of Twelve Step recovery and the negative associations of the number thirteen. That's a great start.

There are any number of rules to writing.

Michele W. Miller smashes two of them brilliantly in the opening chapters of her novel, The Thirteenth Step: Zombie Recovery. For a start, Pixar's fourth rule of their 22 is as follows:

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

Miller opens her novel at a New York lottery winners' press conference. Although not quite in the middle of things - as Homer would advise - the norm here is already not the everyday. A syndicate of tax auditors winning the lottery is exceptional.

Another rule is to make your characters memorable. Miller introduces a number of characters in a wonderfully original manner: Through the use of mnemonics employed by another character so that he remembers the winners' names. Jim is slim, so he's Slim Jim, and so forth. Great stuff, we're thinking. Miller is doing our work for us.

Set-up complete, Miller kills them off like they're nameless, expendable stormtroopers, as a zombie apocalypse rains hell on the press conference. The realism of the events - and the surrealism of the zombie attack - are both terrifically handled.

Not-entirely-likable social observations before the attack - made by the lottery's public representative - are given greater weight with the ways in which some of the victims meet their ends.

I highly recommend the audiobook. It's the first full novel I've given a go (other than books that pre-date the digital age). I feared I wouldn't be able to devote my attention to it, but I am surprised at how easy it is to follow. It is more than ably narrated by Gabrielle deCuir.

Super stuff. Buy the book on Amazon here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: JIHADI A Love Story by Yusuf Toropov

Image
With a fantastic opening purportedly penned by a recently deceased narrator and edited via running commentary by a secondary narrator, JIHADI: A Love Story is written by Yusuf Toropov. The emotional intelligence of the main protagonist and the story itself are high on the list of pluses at the outset. Although many expectations are confounded throughout the story, the expectation of more confusion, while reading the opening pages, does not bear out. So if you find yourself asking: “What’s this about?”, just power on through the opening five pages. The quality of the writing will draw you in at the outset. But the plot is riveting, and it all starts to become fairly clear fairly quickly. It’s one of those novels that merits a second read not because of its difficulty, but because of the prose's beauty. In terms of plot, there is so much to it that there are things you may miss the first time out. Among much else, readers may find they are reading the novel for its story, and then
Read more

Dead Men Naked by Dario Cannizzaro

Image
Dario Cannizzaro’s narrator Louis, the protagonist of Dead Men Naked (available at Amazon ), loses his best friend Neil in a bizarre, seemingly hallucinogenic near-remote attack from an attic window as they stand in the same room, by Lou’s neighbour and a giant crow. Given the tequila and other substances taken, it is difficult to determine what exactly occurred through the narrator’s eyes. But Louis comes round the following morning worse-for-wear; he finds his friend’s body, realises that what happened was no dream, and summons the authorities to the scene. Strange beginnings complement a funeral where Neil’s parents end up consoling him as much as vice versa. On the trip, while Lou drowns his sorrows, he meets Mallory at a nearby, not-so-nearby dive, and begins an exploration of the spirit world. The journey is a theme in this novel, the roadside scenery described with a vivid and subtle poetry throughout. Also beautifully captured are aspects relationships – for instance,
Read more

The Survival Girls Book Review

Image
The Survival Girls book: http://thesurvivalgirls.com/ Among her other achievements, Ming Holden gained the top prize in a Glimmer Train fiction contest in 2013. The email announcing her win came into my busy inbox one morning last year, and I almost deleted it. I clicked on it, more to get it marked as read than anything else, and I glanced at some words of acceptance from the prizewinner of the latest story competition, with a quote from Madeleine Albright and something about the power of intentionality. “Politics and philosophy,” I thought. When I clicked through beyond the teaser (which DID NOT do her writing-advice piece justice, although quoting a Democrat-appointed cabinet secretary, and a bit of philosophy will - surprisingly - get me clicking at anything), there was a wonderful Obamaesque idealism in Holden’s jesuitical plea to write for others, once you have an intended readership in your head. That readership can be the EMO kids, the dispossessed, the refugees, the voice
Read more