Review by KitabuKitamu -- The Ultimate Guide to Zombies

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KitabuKizuri
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Review by KitabuKitamu -- The Ultimate Guide to Zombies

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[Following is a volunteer review of "The Ultimate Guide to Zombies" by Dave Robertson.]
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3 out of 4 stars
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The Ultimate Guide to Zombies is a book written by a movie enthusiast. Dave Robertson Is a writer whose inclination is in the horror genre.

Zombies are not a strange phenomenon to anyone who enjoys watching motion picture. Every once in a while you will see a video with people who are living-dead, definitions of who or what they are varying according to cultural context. The first time I saw a zombie related movie I was watching The Omega Man. This book is an attempt to define and categorize one specific ‘genre’ of a living-dead human and how it all came to be. The term ‘zombie’ has its origin in history and has been used different ways to achieve various goals as its popularity soared. Nothing has popularized zombies as much as movies in the twentieth century.

The book illustrates the origins of the legend of these beings, citing Haitian voodoo as their genesis. A story is told of a Haitian man who passed on, only to be seen later in a vegetative state in a different area. Another person who lived in Haiti for a while witnessed dead men working in the cane fields. He ended up being credited as one of the first to use the term ‘zombie’ in his description of the beings. He described it as “…a dead body which is made to walk and act and move as if it were alive.” These and more accounts spurred stories of zombies into American culture and storytelling.

The book unravels how the movies told the zombie story from the original (being a consequence of voodoo priesthood), to other kinds which could contaminate their nature into normal humans in various ways. The author gives examples of films and program episodes that show differences in how the zombies came to being. Every now and then a film would introduce a different characteristic of a zombie that would be emulated in others. In one movie they may be daft, clumsy and move slow, in another they are capable of complex thought processes, learning and running.

The book has other chapters which tell us much more, like how songs like Thriller (Michael Jackson) and other creative material influence the growth of zombie culture. Gatherings like zombie walks, runs, festivals, weddings and so on, where people gather togerther dressed as zombies, are becoming more and more popular worldwide. We are also taught more about how their anatomy works; how to deal with them should we encounter them in real life and given a detailed guide to obtaining the required resources.

This book would serve to be useful to content creators who need to include aspects of the zombie phenomenon into their creative works. If there are unwritten rules on how zombies are to be portrayed, then this would be a favourable guide to find out more about them. I am concerned though, of the biblical Apocalypse implication of people seeking death and not finding it. Does it mean that at some point there are people who will attempt to mortally wound themselves and fail? Would that warrant their elimination by other humans? For the above reasons, I rate the book 3 out of 4 stars. I hardly noticed any spelling errors in the book.

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The Ultimate Guide to Zombies
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