All tagged Zombies

Podcast #24: Talking with Courtney Summers About Everything, Part 1

We were lucky to recently spend over three hours (!) talking with noted Supernatural expert Courtney Summers. (We hear she writes books too.) We covered a range of subjects from zombies with fashion sense to writing characters experiencing trauma and everything in between. 

This is the first of what will be three parts of this conversation with Courtney, who we could have talked to all day if we hadn't gotten super-hungry. Look for the other episodes trickling out on iTunes and here on the blog in the coming weeks. (Pro-tip, subscribing on iTunes means that you get episodes a day or two before everyone else.)

Podcast #11: Personal Agency in Fiction with Author Mindi Scott

We're super-excited to have a two-part episode of the podcast with our friend and a favorite author, Mindi Scott. Mindi is the author of two outstanding books for teens, Freefall (2010, Simon Pulse) and Live Through This (2012, Simon Pulse).

Mindi's novels are "quieter" stories focussing on characters taking control of their own lives--stories of personal agency. We thought it would be great to have her talk about this theme in the context of not only her own books, but those she recommends as well. Mindi brought up some fascinating concepts related to how these types of stories are constructed, so we hope you enjoy!

Read the rest --> 

Reawakening by Charlotte Stein - Reviewed on Clear Eyes, Full Shelves

It has recently come to my attention that Clear Eyes, Full Shelves has been pigeonholed as a YA blog—while simultaneously being blocked from several servers for indecency.

WTF? How dare they constrain us to simply a single category? We’ve got our own official adult romance correspondent! We review everything from the latest True Blood to Japanese horror novels! And when did chest-waxing become an indecent topic*?

In an effort to really earn that indecency label and prove, once and for all, that we aren’t only interested in YA, I decided to review Reawakening by Charlotte Stein, a book about how the zombie apocalypse forced a one woman and two hot men into a threesome.

Yeah, you read that right. Zombies and the fun kind of threesomes. (You get this is NSFW, right?)

Reawakening takes place two years after zombies have changed life forever. No-one’s really sure what caused the crisis; no-one knows what changed the majority of the population into strange creatures that sure resemble zombies.

‘They’re not even fuckin’ zombies, really- people just went crazy, you know they did. Probably, like, some mutated rabies virus or some shit like that. And I bet it weren’t even a bomb or some kind of chemical warfare. I bet it was something fuckin’ ridiculous, like GM crops or a new kind of Aspirin.’

Civilization has crumbled, leaving random pockets of survivors and a hell of a lot of flesh eating creatures. June has managed to survive the zombie apocalypse (so far) but she’s definitely hurting. She’s rescued in the first chapter by a weirdo in a Hawaiian shirt named Jamie who takes her to his safe island.

Jamie lives on an island fortress, surrounded by mines, alarms and all sorts of weaponry along with his friend Blake. At first June has difficulty adjusting to this new, less dangerous reality. With such an impregnable fortress between them and any danger, Blake and Jamie haven’t had to abandon everything that makes life worth living.

{Review} This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers

This must be what Dorothy felt like, I think. Maybe. If Dorothy was six scared teenagers and Oz was hell.

 

I have to admit, I was nervous about reading Courtney Summers’ new book, This is Not a Test. 

Not because I don’t love her writing—I do. Some Girls Are is a book I recommend all the time. Not because I don’t like zombies—I do. I love 28 Days Later, The Walking Dead and Zombieland. It’s just that I couldn’t get my head around Courtney’s amazing contemporary style meshing with an zombie story.

Obviously, I am an idiot, because This is Not a Test is one of the most memorable books I’ve read this year.

This is Not a Test is a zombie novel, yes, but it’s also a story about survival—survival in many forms.

Tomorrow Land by Mari Mancusi hit my sweet spot for book brain candy.

And, yes, that’s a compliment—good book brain candy is hard to come by. However, I want to say from the outset that Tomorrow Land is campy. It’s cheesy. It’s over-the-top. But, I love action movies and comic book-inspired movies, so I’m always up for a bit of ridiculousness in my entertainment. If you don’t enjoy those things too, Tomorrow Land is not at all for you. 

Previously published in paperback as Razor Girl by now-defunct Dorchester (Goodreads, Amazon), Tomorrow Land is available only as an ebook (I believe it’s self-published, but it’s obviously professionally edited and formatted) at the moment. It is my understanding that Tomorrow Land was retooled as a YA novel while Razor Girl was an adult novel (I am curious as to the differences—Google hasn’t helped in determining this). 

The premise is a bit… wild.