Monday 8 July 2013

Review on 'Warm Bodies'









“R” is a zombie who lives in an abandoned airport. He does not remember anything about his life before he died, not even his name, although he is sure that it began with the letter R. The only thing that R does in his Undead state is wonder aimlessly round the airport, and visit the city when he craves human brains. That is until he meets Julie, a human girl who he decides to save rather than eat. With Julie's help, R slowly starts to regain human emotions and his craving for brains lessens. R decides that he is not content with his life as a zombie, and wants to fully regain his humanity. But it's not only R who is changing, the zombies that R shared the airport with also seem to be going through changes. R and Julie start a battle against the zombie virus. Will they succeed or will the Boneys destroy the zombies before they can fully regain their humanity?

As I had seen the trailer for the movie adaptation of this book, and I hate seeing the movie before reading the book I thought I should probably read it. The book is told from R's point of view, which I thought was interesting, as the zombies are usually seen as the “bad guys” so it was original to see a story with a zombie protagonist. As I usually like supernatural novels, I had expectations for this book and it did not disappoint. R is a very likable character, and the reader is able to sympathize with his want to become a living person again, as although R needs to eat humans to survive, after meeting Julie he starts to dislike what he is. Although the book has emotional parts and talks between Julie and R, the book is also action packed, with fight scenes and chases between the zombies and the Boneys. It is quite gory in parts, which is to be expected from a zombie novel. They do eat brains after all! I thought that it was a unique idea to have the zombies see flashbacks of the humans life once they had eaten their brain. The flashbacks from Perrys life was confusing at times, but was overall a good idea to give R background information on Julies life.  If you enjoy zombie stories and don't mind seeing them in a positive light, then I recommend this book.