Warm Bodies

I would've liked it better if I didn't read it in audiobook form

A few chapters into Warm Bodies it was obvious to me that it had started out as a short story. In fact, it probably would've been much better if it had stayed that way.Warm Bodies has a lot of great lines, and a lot of very pretty prose mulling through the undead mind of a love struck zombie. Its often existential, as one's thoughts would be when one doesn't really exist in the traditional sense. Its also quite repetitive. I appreciate what Isaac Marion was trying to do. With culture's current zombie obsession, the questions are often “What would you do to survive?” and rarely venture into “What's the point?” Which should surprise no one, the zombie apocalypse when it isn't a repressed fear of people, it is a thinly veiled last-man-standing escapist fantasy of running rogue in a world with no more rules or order. However, that doesn't mean that Warm Bodies is the first story to raise these questions - several of the installments to [b:The Living Dead 3302568 The Living Dead John Joseph Adams http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51-3y-xl4DL.SL75.jpg 3339382] anthology which I loved and reviewed last year go there, and much more artfully than this does.The characters were more like concepts than people, and were difficult to find a connection with. The fact that R is an empty shell is not too much of a grievance, that's kind of point, but Julie just wasn't that interesting at all. She's supposed to be some kind of former wild child, military brat turned good girl. I appreciate the attempts to root her in reality - her dysfunctional past, the conflict with her father - but she still feels pretty Manic Pixie to me. R and Julie's relationship sounded like a great friendship, but there was no romantic chemistry. If anything I felt like R was more in love with Perry, Julie's boyfriend who he ate the brains of. In a lot of ways, Perry is the more interesting character than either of them, though he probably wouldn't have been if he weren't dead. A lot of Perry's development comes with the grand perspective of no longer having to worry about survival and existing as a specter inside R's head. His presence creates a lot of the tension when Julie's character is introduced, but after he fades away the book hits a big lull until the major conflict begins. I think the reason why this is getting a 3-star rating instead of anything lower is because I wisely took a break from it during the dull part and came back just in time for things to pick up, and I did actually like the ending.I like this as a kind of parable, a modern gothic fairytale, if you will. The mythology that Marion creates about the zombies and the plague that created them is really interesting and the Boneys, the skeletal leaders of zombie society, are creepy as hell. But that just reaffirms my original thought that this would've been much better as a short story or at least a novella.

4 1/2 stars