My wife gave me the book Paul is Dead: The British Zombie Invasion by Alan Goldsher as a Christmas
gift. She knows I like to read. She
knows that I like Zombies and she knows that I like the Beatles. It should have been the perfect gift, right? It certainly seemed that way to me. I mean, what could be better than an oral
history of the zombified Beatles?
But then I actually began to read to book
My initial enthusiasm quickly wore off because the book was
tedious to read; all of the characters speak in the same voice. They all sound the same – Paul, George,
Ringo, John, George Martin, Brian Epstein…. Everyone in the book speaks in the
same way, with the same idioms, with the same vocabulary, with the same
cadences. Everyone, that is, except Mick
Jagger – who sounds like a character from a bad swords and sorcery movie. The oral history format of this novel needed
a diverse range of characters that Goldsher was unable to deliver.
Paul is Undead
also fails as a book about the Beatles as Zombies (except Ringo, a seventh
level ninja) in that they’re not
zombies. Not in either the Haitian Voodoo
or the George Romero sense. They ‘re brain eating, undead creatures of some variety. But
not Zombies.
And they’re not convincingly the Beatles either…
And they’re not convincingly the Beatles either…
Sadly this book is a low level knock off of Seth
Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and
Zombies (inserting zombies and ninjas into a favorite and familiar classic)
and Max Brooks’ World War Z: An Oral History
of the Zombie War (the oral history format).
There’s plenty of madcap violence and destruction, there are
cameo appearances by Rock-n-Roll greats like Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, and
Bob Dylan – all of which are intended to be humorous. But they’re mostly not. I chuckled a few times as I read, but not
often.
It was a great gift from my wife, but disappointing.
It was a great gift from my wife, but disappointing.
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