Deadlands [Paperback]

Generations have passed since a war ravaged the world, leaving nothing but barren, fallout-ridden countryside in it's wake. But power-hungry fiends were not content to stop at utter desolation. The fallen have been raised from the dead in order to create an army dead-set on continuing the destruction. A handful of lucky survivors have lived in various underground cities, creating a new way of life more primitive than that of their predecessors, desperately trying to restore some semblance of humanity.

Christian and Cadence have lived in such an underground city, known as Down-Town. The brother and sister work as guardsmen, protecting the city from the "rotters" who wander the barren wasteland aboveground, seeking the flesh of the living. When word gets out of other underground havens being ravaged, the guardsmen head out into the light to gather information. However, what knowledge awaits them on the surface shatters what little security they may have salvaged during those years in their burrows, as a new threat preys on what little remains of the endangered human race.

Scott A. Johnson has managed to breathe some new life into a worn out genre with his novel Deadlands. Many of the elements used are highly cliched, but Johnson places a rather intriguing spin on the plot as a whole, building upon the foundation laid by previous zombie genre authors. The plot builds quickly and doesn't loosen it's cold, decayed grip until the very end, and then you'll wish it wasn't over. I would have liked the book to be a little longer, and perhaps the ending a little less rushed, but this was still a great read, and I recommend Deadlands to other fans of zombie, horror, or sci-fi fiction. I look forward to anything Scott A. Johnson has to put out in the future!

Honestly speaking, the first half of this book reads like any other Zombie novel. Although clichéd, the story is still interesting and Mr. Johnson has created a few memorable characters that carry you through this post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland.

But, just as you are starting to think that you've read it all before, Johnson pulls the rug out from under you with a unique plot twist and keeps you reading until the end.

With each book, Johnson's prose and character development are getting stronger and stronger and he may be a very strong voice in the future of horror.

The book could benefit from a little editing as there are a few mistakes that pulled me right out of the story. (For example: instead of saying that something wasn't to be taken lightly, it said that it wasn't to be taken likely.) However, such errors were few enough that they didn't really stop my enjoyment of the tale.

In addition, one of the characters, Tierra, seemed more silly than sympathetic. I'll admit Johnson lost me a bit with this one. I just didn't believe in Tierra at all.

However, as a whole, the book is worth reading and I'm looking forward to Mr. Johnson's next offering!

This is more of a short story than a full blown novel. Unencumbered by a lot of intricately drawn characters, it moves in, gets to the point, and seals the deal in rapid fashion. Because of that I can forgive a little bit of simplicity when it comes to the emotions and actions of the main characters. Neither was extremely compelling or fascinating but given the page count, it would have been hard to give them a lot more depth. Overall, it was an easy read and fun enough that I can recommend it to someone who is a fan of zombies.

There is a new and creative slant to the zombies of old here. I do feel that it works well in a nuclear devastated wasteland where this story takes place and makes it interesting. It does drive this tale along so is certainly worthwhile without overshadowing the story itself.

I myself have no preference for new vs. traditional zombies. Some folks might complain about more stories with the old Romero zombies, saying "its all been done before" but the best out there, in my humble opinion, are "Day by Day Armageddon," "World War Z," and "The Walking Dead" series, all of which deal with traditional Romero-esque type zombies. What makes any zombie tale great is the story telling and the characters that inhabit it. Of course, there are good stories where there is derivations from the traditional as well, such as Brian Keene's "The Rising" and "City of the Dead" as well as a plethora of short stories in the various anthologies out there. The derivation works here, but it does not elevate the actual story so much as move it along. It is fun and interesting, but not totally fascinating or outright terrifying.

Since this story was so fast paced, I did not invest too much in either of the main characters. They were pretty flat and lacked a great deal of depth. Their actions weren't necessarily always predictable, but how they react seemed pretty straight forward and simplified. This is not a sharp criticism...afterall, there is only 190 pages in fairly large print which doesn't give a lot of room for more indepth analysis of each individual's psychy.

The quick pace does have its failings. At one particuarly dramatic and critical point near the end of the book an action and its results are explained in all of one paragraph, which is tremendously anti-climactic. I refuse to play the spoiler here, but something so key to the story development is over and done before you know it and we are on to something else. I feel that a few more paragraphs could have been spared to detail things out a bit at that point.

Overall though, a creative zombie story that was fun to read and quick to finish.

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