Rom-Zom-Com. You’ve seen the cheeky abbreviation, but have you considered the disturbing implications? We’re talking about a genre of fiction that involves romantic bonding over, well, the Apocalypse. Dinner and dancing? Too passe. What the dating scene needs is mass slaughter!

Personally I lay this one mostly at the feet of Simon Pegg. Certainly, elements of the Rom-Zom-Com predate ‘Shaun of the Dead’, but that was one of the hallmark modern events that helped bring back the idea of a couples’ Anti-Zombie experience.

All this is by way of an introduction to the novel ‘Eat Slay Love’ which the ZRC was generously given the opportunity to review by publisher Orbit (who clearly fear no honest criticism from the Zombie Rights Movement).

Yes, a real Rom-Zom-Com novel, actually the third in a series dealing with revitalizing (no pun intended) a failing marriage after the End of the World. From the publisher’s description:

Sarah and David have survived the zombie apocalypse. They stood side by side and fought the undead, mad scientists, and even bionic monsters until the unthinkable happened. A zombie bite. But not even that could stop them. Now, with a possible cure in hand, they’re headed east, looking for a safe zone behind the rumored “Wall.” They’re feeling pretty optimistic.

That is until Dave stops sleeping and starts lifting huge objects.

Eat. Slay. Love.

Because they haven’t got a prayer.

Sarah and David are representative of a new breed of Anti-Zombie protagonist: the efficient, genre-savvy Anti-Zombie survivalist. When faced with the rise of the Differently Animated, these two adjust remarkably well to a world where violence reigns supreme instead of the rule of law. It turns out that what they needed most wasn’t couple’s counseling but headshots. Lots and lots of headshots.

However, the events of the previous book in the series have left them with a task so important that they have to put aside a lucrative, if highly immoral, Anti-Zombie mercenary business. After tangling with a mad scientist David was bitten by a Zombie, then ‘cured’ with an experimental vaccine. Sarah and David resolve to get the only remaining sample of the drug to the outside world, which supposedly lies beyond a barrier wall built through the Midwest, and the two lovebirds/steely-eyed killers set out for the border many thousands of miles away.

Only, as the description hints, David may be part Zombie himself now. Awkward!

Cards on the table time: when I requested to read this book I didn’t do my homework first and wasn’t aware it was third in a series. This fact becomes pretty obvious early on, with sizeable chunks of exposition to explain how Sarah and David got to this point in their lives (or partial Un-life, in David’s case). The reader is pretty painlessly initiated into the backstory though; this isn’t a case where you’ll be hopelessly lost if you start in the middle.

Sarah and David are well-crafted Everyman characters and work overtime to create sympathy for the Survivalist cause. Sarah, our narrator, feels genuine, even as she consistently refuses to address the negative consequences of her own Anti-Zombie behavior. Her affection for David is balanced only by her own insurmountable, uncompromising will to survive, which leads to innumerable acts of tragic Anti-Zombie violence as she works to hold her marriage together and protect her semi-Zombie husband from a world that would probably hate and fear him, X-Men style, if only they knew the truth.

I’ll concede that ‘Eat Slay Love’ works as entertainment, particularly once the traveling party expands from the main married couple to include a sneaky reporter after their story and a legitimately hilarious drugged out, washed-up old rock star who drifts hazily into their orbit. There are occasional lapses in logic for the reader to trip over, and the larger world sometimes makes little sense, which could be said of many Zombie Apocalypse stories. At the end of the day though, ‘Eat Slay Love’ is a far easier read than I’d imagined.

And that’s precisely why it’s so insidious. Anti-Zombie propaganda is one thing, but entertaining Living Supremacist fiction, aimed outside the mainstream horror community? This is clearly setting a dangerous precedent.

The Zombie Rights Campaign therefore awards ‘Eat Slay Love’ our lowest and most shameful ranking, that of ‘Living Supremacist’.

For shame.

Tags: Books, ZRC Reviews

This entry was posted by John Sears on Tuesday, December 6th, 2011 at 10:41 am and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.