I can probably count on one hand the number of times I have put a book down without finishing it and moved on to something else, my mind just completely out of touch with the story. When this happens I usually tell myself that I will come back to the book and give it another try, but so far this has never happened, Monster Island being the only exception.
I’m not sure what it was about the first hundred pages, but I was barely able to get through them. I don’t know if it was a boredom with zombie tales, or just a lack of interest in what was going on in the story, but once I reached page one hundred I decided to set the book down and read something else for a while, that book being Thunderhead by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, which also nearly got set down after a while, though not because I was bored with the story, but bored with reading in general and frustrated by some of the twists and turns my life had taken , which is now why I don’t think there was really anything wrong with Monster Island. Also, I am glad I went back and gave the book a second try after finishing Thunderhead because I now feel it was one of the more interesting zombie reads, one that doesn’t really fall into the traditional ‘a group of people barricade themselves inside a building or a fort and fight off the zombie legions’ (well, there was a little bit of this, but just enough to keep the mainstream zombie fans happy) zombie tale. It also didn’t really concern itself with explaining how the zombie infestation spread, which every other book I have read so far always talks about, the weird mysterious virus from the jungle that kills and then reanimates the body being the most common cause. Instead this one just jumped right into the story of a UN weapons inspector who is on a boat with a bunch of girls from Somalia who are headed to New York City to find medication to help their warlord leader battle the AID’s virus. At first they tried to find medication in Africa, but everywhere they went had been picked clean, so Dekalb suggested they go to the UN headquarters which would have a medical ward stocked with the much needed drugs.
While all this is going on another story develops that features a man named Gary who has purposely turned himself into a zombie, but has done so in a way that will prevent brain damage which makes him one of the few zombies walking around that can still think and speak, something which helps him connect with Dekalb’s group once the two meet. Being a zombie, however, he eventually does crave some flesh, which ends up pitting him against Dekalb’s group, but helps him link up with a type of zombie one doesn’t usually see in these books, one that is powerful enough to control the mindless zombies and use them to create a zombie nation, one that is determined to destroy the human race.
Monster Island is the first in a zombie trilogy, one which I plan on reading and may even purchase today if I decided to walk to the local bookstore. From everything I gather this book started out as some sort of online story, hence the ‘an online phenomenon now lurches into print!’ statement on the back cover, but all the research I have tried to do to learn about this ‘online phenomenon’ has drawn a blank. David Wellington does, however, have a webpage that is serializing a vampire novel, so maybe this is what he did when originally writing Monster Island? I don’t know for sure, though, and really it doesn’t matter, since the book is now available at bookstores and is something every zombie fan should read. Hell, even if you aren’t a zombie fan the book is pretty good, so give it a try.
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