Top 5 Tuesday #63: Umm… Zombies Don’t Scare Me 😨

Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme created by Shanah, the Bionic Book Worm, and now hosted by Meeghan at Meeghan Reads.

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This week’s topic:

Top 5 horror/thriller tropes that don’t scare you

(Let’s talk about horror tropes that you are brave in the face of… or that you find mildly ridiculous to funny.)

Well, if I stick to this week’s topic, I’ll have a very short list because I’m a bit superstitious and scare easily, so just about all horror tropes scare me. Exceptions are only for slasher films and zombie movies because zombies are funny.

So, continuing on that zombie thought, here are some zombie books I’ve read/are on my TBR.

Feed by Mira Grant

First up is a novel I read last year in the midst of the corona pandemic. It’s a zombie novel about a young woman and her brother and friend who are journalists covering a political campaign. When the story begins, the zombie apocalypse has already happened and people have adapted to living with it; however, the zombies are still a threat and we see them sometimes weaponized while the main characters are on the campaign trail.

Feed was a good read but slow-paced. The most interesting thing to me was the zombie virus, which is called the Kellis-Amberlee virus and was created when cures for cancer and the common cold merged. It’s also a story that digs into journalism, so if you’re interested in that industry and zombies, then this one is for you.

DCeased by Tom Taylor, illus. by Trevor Hairsine & Stefano Gaudiano

The chances of me not liking this comic book was very slim. I mean… superheroes + zombies = Zezee loves it! 😀

So it’s a superhero comic book set in the DC universe about an undead virus that has swept the world infecting everyone INCLUDING the superheros. Of course, I loved it. This volume covers the beginning of the zombie apocalypse and… I loved it. 😊 I was very entertained. Can’t wait to do my review. I have no idea why I haven’t done it yet.

The Strain by Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan

I really enjoyed this book. I was introduced to it via the TV show adaptation that aired on FX a couple years ago. I loved the first and second seasons, but didn’t like the last season much. Still, it’s one of my favorite TV shows.

So, the creatures are vampires rather than zombies, but I think of them as vampire-zombies because they can be a bit mindless sometimes. It’s about a vampire-zombie apocalypse that begins in NYC. The story begins when a plane lands at JFK airport, I think, and immediately goes dead, no communication in or out. When officials investigate, it seems that everyone on the plane is dead. They evacuate the plane but notice that there are a few survivors. However, those survivors begin to have weird symptoms and suddenly the bodies of dead evacuees disappear. Next, odd attacks begin happening in the city and… lots of other stuff.

I loved this one too. I had a great time watching the show and reading the first book because my favorite type of zombie story is about how the zombie apocalypse began. With this one, I love how they treat the spread of the vampire-zombie apocalypse because it gets scientific and is presented as a parasitic infection thereby playing upon the parasitic nature of the vampire. I thought that was pretty cool. Unfortunately, I didn’t like the second book as much and have yet to read the third.

The Kingdom of the Gods by In-Wan Youn & Eun-Hee Kim, illus. by Kyung-Il Yang, transl. by Christine Dashiell

Wooo!! Another one I learned of through its TV show adaptation. It’s a horror manga, and I actually haven’t yet read it, but I might do so for Spooktastic Reads, a reading event hosted by the Wyrd & Wonder crew over the 13 days leading up to Halloween.

I believe the TV show, called Kingdom, closely follows the manga. It’s a Korean TV series set during Korea’s Joseon Dynasty and is about a prince who stumbles upon an outbreak of an undead plague while investigating a political conspiracy and rumors surrounding the king’s death. I had to summarize what I found on Wikipedia because I think this is a hard one to briefly explain. The TV show has a slow build, but I loved it both because it’s a zombie TV show AND because the setting made me nostalgic for old Asian martial arts movies I used to devour as a kid.

Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry

I know nothing about this one and didn’t bother looking it up before doing this post. A friend recommended it to me since I like zombie stories, and that’s the only reason why I got it.

Severance by Ling Ma

I think this is another zombie apocalypse story that begins in NYC, but I’m not sure. I’ve since forgotten what it’s about and I have not read it. I bought it because I’m pretty sure “zombies” was mentioned somewhere in association with it (I’ll be so upset if there are no zombies in it) and because I like the pink cover.

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So those are the zombie books I read/would like to read.

If you have any ZOMBIE TV show/movie/book recommendations, PLEASE leave them below.

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