Book Review – Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

One of the quotes featured on the front cover of this book was from Simon Pegg:-

‘A mesmerising evolution of a classic contemporary myth’

Could not have said it better myself.

My favourite line of the book is:

‘There is no ideal world for you to wait around for. The world is always just what it is now, and it’s up to you how you respond to it.’

This book is essentially a ‘zombie romance.’ When I first heard about the book my first thought was, ‘err gross.’ After all, I do love a gory film and zombie films are my favourite. The zombies, however, are never the characters I root for, it’s always the gun toting, wild eyed survivors I want to survive. I am usually hidden behind a cushion in the dark screaming ‘blow that freak’s head off!’

This book is told by R, a zombie. A young zombie it seems, as his decay is not pronounced, like some of his counterparts. He is pretty much intact. He acts like any other zombie, stumbling around, searching for ‘food’ and eating brains. R, however has a brain and he uses it. He wants to remember his past, he does not want to be dead. He can’t remember any of his former life, just the initial ‘R’ from his name. He saves things from hunting trips, human possessions, records, photos. He is a thinking zombie.

He and his friend ‘M’ go hunting, like they do every few days. This day, he encounters Perry and Julie, both in extremely different ways, and he makes the decision to save Julie, and take her into his world. I won;t spoil too much of this book, but basically, R and Julie tentatively fall in love and discuss their world together. Fleshies and Boneys form two very different kinds of zombies, who form a kind of civilization of their own.

Julie and Perry live in a stadium city, a fortress of survivors, where they exist, but do not live. They are essentially as soul devoid as the zombies themselves, apart from Julie and her friend Nora, who we encounter later in the book. Julie is as desperate as R is for things to change….

The Fleshies and the Boneys, an ‘Elder’ brigade of zombies, who seem to rule the realm, ‘marrying’ R to another zombie and given them some zombie adopted children, change due to this awakening within ‘R’. Soon Julie and R are on an epic journey to save their worlds, bring them together and find their way back to humanity, and life itself.

R is a strange character who quickly burrowed himself into my head and lingered there. I loved his character and never have I wanted a zombie to succeed, like I did him. A brilliant book, it really stayed with me afterwards. Laugh out loud in places, and gruesome in others. This book is well worth a read if you have the stomach, but don’t eat while reading! Some parts are flesh shivering, both from the acts of humans and zombies alike.

This book is more about life, love, loss and humanity, it also has a weighty undertone of the state of our planet, and how humanity can alter and destroy itself, imploding and pouring out fear, anger and hate.

This is Isaac Marion’s first book and it is a corker. I think this will appeal equally to men and women.

It is available now, I purchased mine from Amazon for the bargain price of £4.99.

Isaac Marion has done for the zombie what Jon Pinnock has done Mrs Darcy and the aliens in his debut novel.

ISBN: 978-0099-54934-5