The Zombie Survival Guide (2003) by Max Brooks: This oddity predated Brooks' World War Z by a full three years. It's basically a set-up for that novel, a guide to surviving the zombie apocalypse written before the zombie apocalypse described in World War Z actually occurs by someone who seems to exist in the same universe as that of World War Z.
The key thing in the volume is an explanation of the zombie virus (dubbed 'Solanum'). There have been zombie outbreaks throughout history, our nameless guide-writer tells us, all caused by that mysterious virus.
Brooks differentiates his zombies from most others with one of the effects of this virus: the living dead are rendered poisonous to virtually anything that might regard them as carrion, from almost all bacteria to bears. Zombies who truly are edible carrion would, as many zombie nitpickers have noted, be pretty much neutralized as a threat in a couple of weeks.
With Solanum comes a couple of other effects: zombies don't digest the people and animals they eat, and zombies can only be killed with a head-shot. The former has been implied from time to time in some zombie movies; the latter has been a staple of zombie movies since at least George Romero's Night of the Living Dead.
I'd guess that this book would be pretty useful if one actually lived in Brooks' fictional universe. There's one glaring problem with Brooks' world both here and in World War Z: he drastically over-rates a silencer/suppressor's ability to muffle the noise of a handgun or rifle.
This wouldn't be such a problem if the book didn't exhaustively detail all the 'noisy' things one shouldn't do (drive a car, yell, walk through tall grass) while nonetheless espousing the worth of silenced guns. Go look up silenced/suppressed decibel levels some time. They're definitely louder than walking through tall grass, cars (even cars without mufflers!) and pretty much everything else.
Brooks' unnamed writer also waxes eloquent about the efficacy of the Japanese samurai sword (or 'katana'). An entire Internet argument sprang up around this topic (and Michonne's use of the katana in The Walking Dead). The general consensus was that the katana is extremely difficult to wield and, wielded by a novice, has an alarming tendency to break. Oops.
There are long, tedious stretches throughout, the boredom and page-flipping arising from those sections which consist of check-lists for what one needs for certain zombie-apocalypse scenarios. Brooks really goes all-in on the idea that this guide is 'real.' And oh so boring in its details.
The most enjoyable parts consist of the entries on zombie attacks throughout history. Brooks apparently thought so too, as a subsequent book and graphic novel series described some of these millennia-spanning attacks in greater detail. Brooks goes back to Ancient Egypt in terms of recorded encounters and even further back with cave paintings and other prehistoric artifacts suggesting that zombies have been around as long as Homo sapiens. The Zombie Survival Guide works best in concert with World War Z. Lightly recommended.
Handling the Undead (Hanteringen av odöda) (2005/ English translation 2009) by John Ajvide Lindqvist, translated by Ebba Segerberg:
Handling the Undead is John Ajvide Lindqvist's second novel after the great, and marvelously adapted for Swedish film, Let the Right One In (2004). The first time around, Lindqvist looked at vampires with a fresh perspective. This time around it's zombies to not quite the same level of excellence as Let the Right One In. There's no shame in failing to match the earlier novel -- Let the Right One In is a truly great horror novel.
Handling the Undead presents zombies in a new light. All the recently dead in a specific part of Stockholm at a specific time one day come back to life. This is not a zombie apocalypse. There are perhaps 1500 of them, and they don't try to eat the living. They just try to get home if they can. Those that are buried have a hard time of this until the authorities figure out the parameters of the Resurrection and dig up those graves that should have the living dead in them.
The novel does concern itself with Why and How this event has happened. But it's more focused on three families handling their undead.
Father David and son Magnus must deal with the return of the horribly disfigured Eva. She's David's wife and Magnus' mother, and she died in a car crash that occured almost simultaneously with the Resurrection. Of all the undead, Eva is the most intelligent and able to answer question, albeit vaguely.
Grandmother Elvy and granddaughter Flora have to deal with Elvy's undead husband who died a few days before the Resurrection after a decade of Alzheimer's. Oh, and Elvy and Flora are telepathic. And Elvy believes a mysterious spirit has told her that the Biblical Apocalypse is about to happen.
Reporter and grieving grandfather Mahler and his daughter Anna have to deal with the return of Anna's two-months-dead son Elias, who died soon after his sixth birthday from a fall from a window.
Meanwhile, lots of stuff happens in Sweden. Or at least Stockholm. The authorities round the dead up. Weird psychic phenomena start to happen. The undead that are extremely decayed cease to function. Is the Apocalypse at hand? And are these zombies ever going to eat someone?
Well, read it and see, I guess. Handling the Undead is a much shorter, less detailed, quieter novel than Let the Right One In. Too quiet, really, and the explanation for what has happened, when it comes, is just a little too goofy to be satisfying.
As with the fantastic revelations at the end of Lindqvist's later Harbour, those in Handling the Undead don't so much satisfy as they undermine all the suspense and world-building that has come before. Despite all the uses of a very Stephen King-like "This isn't what was really there but only what the human mind can translate," the end sputters out in a most unsatisfying way. What has come before was pretty solid, but perhaps not enough to lift Handling the Undead above a Lightly Recommended.
