Blogfest Winner!

I want to thank all the people who entered my Blogfest giveaway. It's awesome that a lot of you like Isaac Marion's Warm Bodies, which is also one of my favorite zombie reads. The Blogfest Winner of 2 zombie books is:

Congrats to Abigail Johnson!

There are still some chances to win on Fishmuffins of Doom. I have 2 more zombie giveaways ending in October: a zombie YA giveaway and a zombie romance giveaway. 

Alice in Zombieland

Alice Bell is sick and tired of her parents. Her dad is crazy and believes in monsters exist to the point that the family is not allowed to leave the house after dark. Her mother stands by and doesn't do anything to stop him. It's Alice's birthday and she wants to see her sister perform in a recital at night. She gets her parents to finally relent and the performance is glorious. On the way home, her dad freaks out and their car spins out of control. Alice wakes up to see that her family is being attacked by horrible creatures that enter their bodies. Later she finds out they died. After she recovers from the accident, she moves in with her grandparents. She tries to forget about the monsters and just get through school along with her new best friend Kat, but distant, brooding, dangerous Cole Holland distracts her. He shows her that the creatures are very real and she is determined to fight them. Will she die avenging her family? Will bad boy Cole end up stabbing her in the back?

I have mixed feelings about Alice in Zombieland. It has a lot of things going for it. Alice is great for the most part. She proves to be assertive and strong, not letting people belittle her or drag her down for the most part. Despite having a lot to be upset about, she isn't the typical self pitying heroine. She deals with her grief in her own way and works through it in stages. I also really liked Kat, her best friend. On the surface, she just seems to be bubbly and airheaded, but she proves to be a good friend with unexpected problems. She added some much needed comic relief and was fun to read about. The second half of the book is my favorite because it's much more action packed and gets away from the petty high school drama. I also enjoyed Gena Showalter's writing. It flowed really well and kept my attention throughout the book even if I had issues with other parts of the book.

I had quite a few problems with the book. From the dedication page, it's abundantly clear that Gena Showalter is religious. Alice is not devoutly religious, but goes to church and generally believes in god. However, there are overtly religious comments and observations in the narrative that don't mesh with her character. They felt out of place and brought me out of the book.l The book also has heavily religious themes. It's good versus evil with absolutely no grey area in between (explicitly stated by a character). I hate this mentality. It's very simplistic and frankly not a good way to see the world. Zombies have been transformed from flesh eating corpses to spirits corrupted by evil that feed on other spirits. I don't like these types of zombies. They have a lot of limitations and they don't bring quite the same horror as conventional zombies do. I am thankful the book wasn't as overtly preachy as I expected it to be, but I tend to avoid Christian fiction because I don't enjoy it.

Cole is a big problem for me. He is the stereotypical bad boy that Alice just can't get enough of. He's controlling, obsessive, and volatile. Alice often completely changes her demeanor and does what he tells her because he's oh so hot. When they see each other every day, they each see a vision of the future, usually of steamy making out. This is never explained and a shoddy way of explaining their instalove and initial obsession with each other. The first half of the book is typical high school drama with a short lived love triangle, typical and way overused in YA.

Alice in Zombieland has absolutely nothing in common with Alice in Wonderland save for a few images and names. The novel probably would have benefited from the removal of the references, but it was probably a good marketing tool. Although I have mixed feelings about the novel, I would read the next book. I would not recommend this for fans of conventional zombies.

My rating: 2.5 fishmuffins

Blogfest 2013 Giveaway!

Blogfest is my very first blog hop! Since it falls during September Zombies, of course I have to give away some awesome zombie books. One lucky reader will win a paperback copy of World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War and a hardcover copy of Fiend by Peter Stenson.

Just leave a comment about your favorite zombie read and your email address. Open internationally. Ends 9/29. Good luck! :)

For the rest of the participants go here. Follow the hop!

Meg Mims
Love is a Many Flavored Thing
The Write Path
Novels on the Run
Hope. Dreams. Life...love.

A Darkness Strange and Lovely

Eleanor Fitt is utterly alone and disgraced. Her brother died; her mother is in a sanitorium; and the Spirit Hunters went to France. Her mother's care is quite costly, so she sells practically anything of value to fund it. Everything changes when Eleanor's phantom hand hurts and she sees yellow eyes and hears the baying of hounds. Marcus is after her and using magic to get these spirit hounds to attack her. Eleanor then flees to France to seek the Spirit Hunters' help. On the way, she meets Oliver, a boy who knew her brother. He has a dark secret that changes everything and forces Eleanor to decide what she how far she will go to survive. They arrive in Paris and find the Spirit Hunters have their own problems. The Dead are attacking all over Paris after being ritualistically mutilated and murdered. They have no clue who is behind it or why it's being done. In order to help them and save Paris, Eleanor may have to do the unthinkable and turn the Spirit Hunters against her.

A Darkness Strange and Lovely starts by dealing with the aftermath of the first book: the death of Eleanor's brother, the loss of her hand, the insanity of her mother and the crippling debt for her treatment, the infamy of the Spirit Hunters, and the fact that Marcus is masquerading as Eleanor's brother in his dead body. All of this takes a toll on Eleanor, especially since she's a social pariah and has to deal with all this alone. She's grown a lot since the first book and proves to be more independent and capable than ever. She's truly an individual who rejects the fashions of the era, speaks her mind, does what she feels is right, and eats what she wants to despite the view of what women should be in that society. That's not say that she doesn't make mistakes because she does. Some of them are extremely frustrating and I want to reach in the book and shake some sense into her. Her hunger for more and more power as she uses necromancy becomes a huge problem that she refuses to address. It'll be interesting to see how it will be addressed in the next novel. She also decides to lie to her friends in order to hide her power and protect a new friend. Despite her mistakes, she is still the same loyal, endearing Eleanor.

After establishing what happened in the last book, the story really takes off. The new main setting is in France and Susan Dennard's descriptive, flowing writing paints a beautiful picture of Paris, from its bustling high society to the beautiful and historical buildings. Everything is drastically different in Paris. The Spirit Hunters spend a lot of time making appearances in society to keep opinion of them high and their very rich patron happy. Their patron keeps them in rich surroundings and it's a much different experience to have everything they need available to them. The Spirit Hunters are much more fashionable, especially Daniel, who has improved his elocution and his manner of dress to appear as a proper gentleman. I love that he reverts back to who he truly is when Eleanor is around.

A Darkness Strange and Deadly does not suffer from second book syndrome. New concepts and characters are introduced and the action just keeps coming with ritual sacrifices and rogue zombies roaming the city. The mystery was nicely resolved while leaving some more overarching plots with loose ends so I can agonize over what might happen. I NEED to know what happens! I can't get enough of these characters and I want the next book now!

My rating: 4.5/5 fishmuffins

Internet Awesomeness : Zombie Edition 2

Awesome zombie stuff! Anything goes: videos, games, anything!

* They Will Eat You!

They Will Eat You! is a creepy internet zombie game. When chemical waste seeps into the ground of the local cemetery, the dead rise! The simple object is to run from the zombies. You have no weapons and you are dead after 3 bites (which is generous). The music that's used during gameplay is so creepy and enhances the atmosphere. Check out the Zombie Education section which details which parts of the human body zombies find most tasty, zombie evasion methods and their effectiveness, a pie graph on the intention of an approaching zombie, and graph detailing the population growth (or lack thereof) of both zombies and humans during a zombie apocalypse. Scroll to the right to see all the diagrams and graphs. Play it here!

* Zombie Parkour



If you aren't aware, parkour is a training method influenced by military obstacle training. The aim is to overcome obstacles as efficiently as possible using only their own bodies and their surroundings to propel them. The film shows people using parkour to avoid zombies. These zombies are super fast and coordinated! They jump without stumbling, climb things, etc. If these parkour guys can't avoid them, there's really no hope for the rest of us. There isn't really a plot. It's a glimpse into this world without dialog. I would like to see a full length film with a more set story, but this is a great start.

* Breaking Dead



Some awesome person cut together scenes of Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead to make an awesome show! It sounds like Jesse accidentally makes some sort of zombie meth and infects the world! It's beautifully and almost seamlessly cut to look like one show that I would totally watch! The dialog works incredibly well with the visuals. I love Walter's speech about people surviving.

* The Dead 2: India trailer



I just heard about there being a sequel to The Dead and a trailer was just posted today! It looks really good. A zombie plague is bad news for a country as densely populated as India. It seems to have a higher budget than its predecessor because it looks a little more polished. I hope the story is as good.

Zombie Songs 2

More fun zombie tunes!

1) Zombies Are People Too by David Ritter

This song is sung by zombies trying get to people barricaded away. They try to spread propaganda so people won't kill them and allow them to eat their brains. Ingenious! I can't embed the song, but it can be heard and downloaded for free from David Ritter's website.

2) Shoot the Zombies (By Shooting Them in the Head) by Andrew



The people from the first song should listen to this advice. This song is super upbeat and catchy. Perfect music to motivate you if you're being chased or sniping from afar. The song is available for 99 cents on Andrew's site.

3) Zombie Love by Cold Blue Rebels



This poor guy is in love with a zombie. He loves her from her rotting flesh to her unbeating heart. It starts as a 50's ballad and then kicks it up a notch with an energetic swing beat. The video is adorable with the zombie dancers and zombies drinking formaldehyde. So sweet!

What are you favorite zombie tunes?

The Evil Dead (2013)

** spoilers **

Mia is a heroin addict dealing with the aftermath of her mother's death. She goes to an old cabin her family owns with her friends and her brother to get her through withdrawal and get clean, but the place has been broken into and defaced. They clean up as best they can and find a weird book wrapped in a trash bag and barbed wire. Eric decides to disregard every single warning, open it, and read it out loud. Of course it releases demons that possess them to torment and eventually kill them. Can they band together to defeat the evil or will all their souls burn in hell?

I usually hate remakes with the fire of a thousand suns. The filmmakers usually dumb down what made the film great in the first place. I actually enjoyed Evil Dead much more than the original. I understand why the original is so well liked, but it's so boring and badly acted. The remake breathes new life into the story, giving a well fleshed out plot and characters with actual personalities and relationships. The relationships are what kept them there in the cabin even after dead cats and evil books are discovered when any sane person would have left. They all want Mia to get clean and want to stay at any cost because her life is at risk if she stays on drugs. The sibling relationship comes into play when David can easily end the whole thing by simply killing Mia. He opts to kill her and then bring her back, risking and eventually sacrificing his own life so she can live. It also makes it all the more meaningful when the demon chooses to appear as whoever they are possessing, in pain and bewildered at their mutilations, to manipulate their loved ones.

Evil Dead is a fun, scary film. There are a few jump scares at the beginning to set the mood, but the real suspense is built later. One of my favorite scenes is where Olivia is possessed and mutilating herself behind a shower curtain. You know exactly what she's doing, but as Eric draws nearer and nearer, you dread actually seeing it and being confronted by the Deadite. The humor isn't the same as the previous films. It's dark and not as overt, but it still had a me laughing out loud quite a few times. I also love this scene because at the midnight showing I went to, the guy next to me said it was the grossest thing he'd ever seen. I liked that the infamous tree rape scene was kept, but made into something actually horrifying and disgusting. The original scene is downright comical and the new one is extremely uncomfortable to watch. Possession is basically a type of rape where an entity enters the body and controls it against the person's will.

The film is an allegory for addiction. Mia and her friends come together for her to conquer her addiction. At first, they force her to stay when she clearly can't handle the withdrawals. Then she is possessed after being raped by her evil doppelganger and turns unrecognizable. Addiction causes people to turn into monsters and hurt the people around them. The possession in the film is communicable and is passed through bites, vomit, and injuries. It shows how toxic addiction can be to loved ones. After her brother kills and revives her, she is left alone to confront her evil doppelganger. Mia is the only one that can conquer her addiction. Her friends and family can do as much as they can, but it won't do any good if Mia isn't willing to change and really work to get better.

Evil Dead is a blast to watch. I love the mixture of dark humor, gross gore, and suspense. The only scene I thought was too over the top was when it started raining blood. After a while, everything is oversaturated with it and it ceases to mean anything. Other than that, it was an enjoyable, well balanced film.

My rating: 9/10 fishmuffins