Zombie Monkey Monster Jamboree
J.J. Hart
Actionopolis, Oct 2006, $9.95, 160 pp.
ISBN: 1`933295086

The Basilisk Patrol of the Wild West Scouts are having an overnight with Patrol Leader Skeeter McGill who wants everything to go perfectly. He studies up for the big day and then proceeds to lead the scouts through a part of the White Mountains in Arizona. The adult leaders get lost trying to find a shortcut in a heavy rain and compound the problem by losing all the food.

When Skeeter calls a halt, they pitch camp as best they can and they find a crate with a warning not to open it, but they do so any way and find a gold monkey with jewels for its eyes. Soon they are disturbed by noises and when they go outside to check they see lots of zombie monkeys surrounding them. They chase them away but the zombie monkeys head for the nearby town so the y the scouts try to figure a way to get rid of them

Rather than being scary, ZOMBIE MONKEY MONSTER JAMBOREE is a humorous horror tale that will have the readers laughing out loud. Skeeter is earnest in his desire to lead and that includes taking care of the zombie monkey problem. One of the scouts “Gas” uses the bodily function he was named after to keep the monkey zombies away from his friends. This is a charming tale that elementary school readers will thoroughly enjoy.

Harriet Klausner

The Zombie Survival Guide
Max Brooks
Three Rivers (Crown), Sep 2003
ISBN: 1400049628

THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE is a terrific lampooning of the genre as Max Brooks (with illustrator Max Werner) warns people to take these attacks seriously or else within twenty-three hours be dead and reanimated as a slow limping creature (that is why they instinctively hunt in packs). Mr. Brooks provides a historical perspective over the millenniums of documented Zombie attacks and what to do and more important not to do when the real judgment day occurs as the dead rise to increase their ranks. Filled with tips on combat (if a choice flight rather than fight), key supplies (two pairs of socks), and how not to lose loved ones to a Zombie. Readers will find this an amusing satire on survival, horror movies and books, and George Romero as obviously Max squared have insider information that a zombie traitor must have leaked, but the humor holds up better by reading small bites over time.

Harriet Klausner

Zanesville
Kris Saknussemm
Villard, Oct 2005, $14.95, 496 pp.
ISBN 0812974166

He wakes up confused as he is not sure who he is, or why he is in the middle of what he assumes is a distorted Central Park, nor how he became middle-aged. He vaguely recalls some childhood moments though they are not lucid and even his humongous by even Deep Throat standard’s maleness seems more like an anime.

Dubbed Clearfather he travels across America seeking to find himself, but receives no assistance as the federal government has been outsourced to the monopoly drug manufacturer, Vitessa Cultporation. Instead he uncovers disposal sex, massive drug-addiction, combative mutilated lesbian motorcycle gangs, organ donors for breakfast, gay heavyweights and the probable creator, but no Clearfather.

ZANESVILLE is an interesting futuristic picture that extrapolates the problems of current day America with two trends losing the drug wars (from within) and outsourcing the entire federal government (Mussolini would enjoy this vision). The panorama is bleak as groups battle one another for a crumb while Big Brother is the future corporation that takes on legendary cult status. The excess battle scenes take away from the prime hyperbole of connecting the dots of the age of Saknussemm with the troubles impacting Americans during the Administration of the first MBA president. Mindful of El Topo, readers of dark gloom and doom allegory thrillers will want to read this cautionary tale.

Harriet Klausner