First up, the official blurb:

It was just another school trip… When their ski-coach pulls up at a cafe, and everyone else gets off, new girl Bobby and rebel Smitty stay behind. They hardly know each other but that changes when through the falling snow, they see the others coming back. Something has happened to them. Something bad…

Soon only a pair of double doors stand between those on the bus and their ex-friends the Undead outside. Time to get a life. Author Kirsty McKay is a major new horror/thriller writer for ages 12+.

There, now that’s out of the way, let’s get on with the review.

Let’s face it, we’re all in love with zombies. From Night of the Living Dead to World War Z, we can’t get enough of those ugly, brain-munching monstrosities. Hell, even my own comic series, Gangrene, politely tips its hat to decades of zombie lore.

But what of this latest entry in the zombie stable? Kirsty McKay’s Undead is a young adult horror in which a group of teenagers find themselves caught up in a full-scale Z-Pocalypse. Thrown together, the teens must learn to overcome their differences if they are to have any chance of surviving and finding out who – or what – is responsible for the onslaught of the living dead.

So far, so familiar, and this is the problem with the book in general. We’ve seen it all before.

The teenagers are little more than stereotypes – the bitchy good-looking girl, the computer geek, the handsome rebel with a heart of gold, they’re all here. The protagonist, Bobby, is new to the school. Having moved from the US, she feels like an outsider, but watching your former classmates become zombies turns out to be quite the bonding experience, and soon she is more or less leading the group in their attempts to survive.

The zombie scenes are effective enough – no more, no less. There are scenes you’ll have seen in almost every living dead film ever – the blood-streaked hand at the window, the hordes of zoms shuffling along the moonlit road – but it is all handled reasonably well so that you don’t ever quite become bored.

In fact, I found myself sitting up well into the night reading the book, which is more a testament to McKay’s writing than to the concept itself. Occasionally I found some of the dialogue a bit clunky – particularly Alice, the bitchy blonde – but other than that this is a well-written story and a quick read. That said, the twist at the end of the story is actually a massive coincidence that I don’t remember being foreshadowed at any point prior to it happening, which was disappointing.

I can’t help but wonder how good the story could have been if it had a unique hook, like Charlie Higson’s The Enemy series, for example. As it is, this book almost reads like a checklist of what you’d expect in any other zombie story. Brain-eating monsters? Check. New fangled viruses? Check. Conspiracy theories? Shady corporations? ‘Heroic’ characters meeting a grisly doom? Check, check and check. Without a unique hook it’s a book that will likely only appeal to existing fans of the zombie genre, and they’re going to have seen it all before.

Yes, the protagonist is female (Bobby is short for Roberta) but that isn’t enough to make this sufficiently different from virtually every other zombie tale we’ve seen in the past. On the Romero scale, it’s nowhere near as good as Dawn of the Dead, say, but it’s no Land of the Dead, either. It’s Day of the Dead – solid enough, with some memorable scenes, but ultimately not as good as what’s come before.

On the other hand, maybe I’m just old and jaded, and this might turn out to be the perfect introduction to the genre for those who haven’t yet dipped their toes into zombie horror.

Undead is published by Chicken House on 1st September 2011.

Trackback URL