I have fond memories of reading choose-your-own-adventure books growing up. These are books that put you as the main character, offering you choices that lead to different outcomes. That's the basic format of the book. The premise is equally simple: zombies have broken out in New York. These zombies are like Romero zombies (dumb, man-eating, bite causes zombie-ism, head shot to kill) only they can run quickly. Your job is simple- survive the outbreak.
The content of this book is surprisingly well-written for the zombie genre, which is normally pretty boring rehash or simple gore. While there is some gore in here, this book doesn't glorify it. There's also drugs, guns, girls, booze, bikers, and buds. All in all, the content is, in my opinion, more AA-14 than "R"-rated. Nothing too explicit in any context, but enough to make the book interesting, funny, and full of action. If you're a fan of zombie movies, there's a ton of inside references throughout this book, as well as to general pop-culture references from the 90's through to now. My guess as that the author is around 30, and writes for his generation. And as I said, he writes well.
Granted, this is nothing close to Shakespear, but it's not meant to be. It's meant to be a bit of fun reading. At close to 400 pages though, there's lots of reading and lots of different choices and paths. I think there's about 9 or so main different plot lines that you can choose, each one full of many ways to die and only one or two ways to live (I survived my first read through the book, future attempts were more mixed). There's lots of variety in the kind of decisions you make, the settings (from suburbia to sewers to skyscrapers), the people you are with (bikers, babes, bozos, and more), the weapons you use (all kinds of regular and improvised weapons), and the choices you have to make (save some kids, let the girl die, sacrifice yourself for a group, etc.). The author has a good sense of humor, and uses it often to emphasize certain choices as being particularly good or particularly bad. My favorite scene had to be the comic book convention, which featured costumed super-heroes fighting real zombies. Classic fun!
All in all then, if you're a fan of light pop fiction, choose-your-own-adventures, and/or zombies, then I highly recommend this book. The writing is great, the illustrations are decent (nothing to write home about), but overall, it's just a fun and easy way to spend a few minutes here and there as you try out different decisions to see what happens. For fans of this kind of reading, it's an easy five stars.
