Review: Zombie Crusade: Still Alive Book Eight

Zombie Crusade: Still Alive Book Eight by Javan Bonds
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

New Book, Same Gratuitous Blood and Violence

I love the Still Alive series because it usually has a perfect balance between gratuitous violence, dark humor, and entertaining storylines. However, Zombie Crusade tips in the scale and has a bit more gratuitous blood and gore than previous books; normally, such a thing isn’t an issue, but in this case, it tended to overtake plot development and most of the humor turned out to be more macabre than the usual dark slapstick. But all that violence and gore is still masterfully written and vividly detailed, so if that’s what you’ve come for, you won’t be disappointed. But for me, I enjoyed the great storylines and humor present in the series, so I was sad that about half the book is dedicated more to slasher-type gore and not so much to plot development.

There are two prominent storylines in Zombie Crusade that carry over from the previous books and while they only crawl forward (due to the superfluous descriptions of violence and gore), they were entertaining enough to keep my attention. Through both the Black Hand arc and the escapades of Brother Mike Brown, we meet a few new characters (both heroes and villains) and also continue to follow the frightening evolution of the naked, blue cannibals as their capabilities continue to develop. However, this book (and the last one as well) feel more like a spin-off series than true sequels to the first six books. Though they aren’t bad by any measure, I do patiently (ok, impatiently) await the return to Mo’s journals and the plot involving the group I see as the primary protagonists of Still Alive.

My favorite part of Zombie Crusade wasn’t a part of the actual book, but rather, the bonus short story included at the end. It’s a prequel story about Smokes and what transpired between the advent of the zombie plague and the first meeting between Smokes and Mo. It was fun and reminiscent of the earlier books, and definitely worth reading.

For the audiobook, Salzman continues to be an exceptional narrator for the Still Alive series, but much of Zombie Crusade’s third-person point of view doesn’t give him much of a chance to shine. I think his best work is in the unique voices of the primary group’s characters, so a significant amount of his talent goes unnoticed in this book. However, Salzman does get a chance to rock out some awesome narration in the short story at the end.

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