David Wellington - Monster Island

[andydecker]

David Wellington - Monster Island (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006, 282 pages)

It's one month after a global disaster. The most "developed" nations of the world have fallen to the shambling zombie masses. Only a few pockets of humanity survive -- in places rife with high-powered weaponry, such as Somalia. In New York City, the dead walk the streets, driven by an insatiable hunger for all things living. One amongst them is different; though he shares their appetites he has retained his human intelligence. Alone among the mindless zombies, Gary Fleck is an eyewitness to the end of the world -- and perhaps the evil genius behind it all. From the other side of the planet, a small but heavily-armed group of schoolgirls-turned-soldiers has come in search of desperately needed medicine. Dekalb, a former United Nations weapons inspector, leads them as their local guide. Ayaan, a crack shot at the age of sixteen, will stop at nothing to complete her mission. They think they are prepared for anything. On Monster Island they will find that there is something worse even than being undead, as Gary learns the true price of survival.


David Wellington is one of those new breed of writers who started writing on the Internet before he became a published writer. A lot of his early novels are al mixture of horror, action and a bit of sf/supernatural fantasy.

At the beginning he wrote this novel, the first of a trilogy. The post apocalyptic zombie novel was not exactly new when it came out, but it was published before zombies became the New Black.

The back text is a bit of a sanitized version. The "schoolgirls-turned-soldiers" are child-soldiers from Somalia. "They looked like a girl band gone horrible wrong. Grey head scarves, navy school blazer, plaid skirts, combat boots. AK-47s slung over their shoulders. Sixteen years old and armed to the teeth." Dekalb, the doomed hero, is being blackmailed to this mission; Mama Halima, the leader of the independent Islamistic Free Woman's Republic in Somalia, needs AIDS medicine and holds Dekalbs daughter hostage.  So off he goes to New York because as an UN inspector he knows where the secret supplies are.

This first novel of the trilogy has the strongest horror content. Wellington makes the most of a world overran by zombies, he has a knack for well realised settings. His characters, while OTT, are a grim bunch. Some elements may not work for everybody, the zombie-virus also revived mummies in museums, and a Celtic bog-mummy becomes the main villain of all novels. Quite a few reviewers hated this, which I can kind of relate. It is a hair-breath away from self-parody - or goes over the border - and is not for everybody.

While the novel has a kind of open end, it can be read without the next novels of the trilogy. Part 2 Monster Nation is a prequel how the zombie plague came into being which becomes a much more sedate science fiction story fast - well, more like Marvel Comics sf than hard sf - , while part 3 Monster Planet fast-forwards some years. Here Dekalb's daughter, now adult and living in Somalia, becomes the heroine. Some zombies become a kind a mutant zombies and it is more like superheroes and villains fighting for the world. It is kind of Mad Max with zombies. The three novels differ wildly in tone, but if you can suspend your disbelief they are fun.