Product Description

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 crackshot 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 undeath, as Gary learns the true price of survival.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29268 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781560258506
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
In Wellington's energetic horror debut, the first of a promised trilogy, Manhattan has become Monster Island after a plague has turned all its denizens into shambling, rotting animated corpses, except for a couple who have kept their intelligence and also acquired psychic powers. When an expedition from Africa arrives, composed of teenage girl-soldiers and a former U.N. weapons inspector, the zombie masters mobilize their forces to kill or eat the living humans. Page by page, the story is inventive and exciting as Wellington exploits his familiarity with New York's nooks and crannies as settings for flesh-chomping battles and narrow escapes. As a whole, though, the book satisfies less since the author selectively forgets anything about the situation or the characters that would inhibit further gross-out episodes. Still, the novel offers some provocative thoughts about the purpose of life and death underlaid with some ultra-dark humor. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
This is a zombie novel--a fantastic zombie novel. Most of the world has fallen to the undead, with pockets of survivors clinging to a precarious existence. At the behest of the leader of the Free Women's Republic of Somaliland, a shipload of those makes the ludicrous trip from Africa to New York in a desperate quest for medicine. New York is a wasteland, and everything depends on a small, incredibly dedicated band of teenage girls, armed to the teeth, and native guide Dekalb, formerly a UN arms inspector. Also, in NYC there is Gary, a zombie who, completely unexpectedly, retains live human mental faculties. The questers get ringside seats for some of the apocalypse's finest moments, and no matter how prepared they thought they were, something worse awaits in the depths of New York. When zombies have already overrun everything, that's saying something. There are many layers to this zombie apocalypse, and this book just gets things rolling. Stay tuned. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Customer Reviews

Picking up the torch lit by Romero
Monster Island is, hands down one of the most original and compelling reads to come along in a very long time.
Wellington injects the genre ignited by Romero and championed by Fulci with a supercharged boost of creativity at every turn.

Vivid descriptions and well researched details meet in an unrivaled example of story telling.
So natural is the world that Wellington weaves that at times, Monster Island is less like reading a book and more being witness to a movie playing in your mind.

You'd be hard pressed to find another book out now that can grab a hold of you and show you with flesh shredding convincingness, the details of what a nightmare made real looks like.
If you did find such a book it's a safe bet that Dave Wellington wrote that one too. My final recommendation is to stop reading this and go buy Monster Island right now.

A worthwhile entry into zombie literature
Monster Island, which was first originally published in a serialized format online, finally got its print release due to the extremem popularity of the online novel, and its two sequels. The novel takes place six weeks after the epidemic, which turned the world to chaos run by the living dead. We follow Dekalb, a former UN weapons inspector who has found safety in Somalia, with a group of female warriors loyal to the warlord of Somalia. When the warlord informs Dekalb that she has AIDS and needs drugs, she sends him and her warriors off to
America to retrieve drugs from the UN building in New York City. Once the group arrives in New York, almost nothing goes right, and the readers is treated to a large amount of zombie violence and gore.

The thing that makes Monster Island stand out is the different take on zombies that author David Wellington uses. I won't give much of anything away, but I will say that one of the main characters in the novel is a zombie who killed himself but kept his brain intact by hooking himself up to a ventilator. This zombie can still think like a human and talk like a human, but he is still overcome with the urge to eat. While this is a totally new take on zombies, it also works against the book in some ways. Wellington takes that basic idea, which isn't all bad, and turns into something much more. It is very reminiscient of Stephen King's Cell, in which the zombies are basically all one being, and can all be controlled. I guess the only reason that I ultimately frowned at this development was the fact that I just wanted a good, old-fashioned zombie story, and this novel definitely is not that. It has some really good, intense moments, but I guess it just didn't live up to what I hoped it would be.

Don't get me wrong, though, I definitely plan to read the last two parts of the trilogy, which are still available online to read immediately.

Monster Island: A refreshing approach at the Zombie genre
David Wellington has started something great here. With Zombies being a part of our pop culture for quite some time now, they tend to get put on the back burner when it comes to true fear, horror, or intelligence when compared to say, Werewolves and Vampires. With the older Romero movies looking more like cheese that creates yawns instead of intrigue and intensity, it one of the harder genres to tackle in modern day literature.

Enter Wellington's "Monster Island". Wellington breaths new life into the old zombie norm by adding a little bit of intelligence and science to the realm. There is much more to his story than just a bunch of corpses moaning and walking around aimlessly with their arms outreached!

Wellington applies the theory that when people die and come back as "undead", they are almost a walking dolt due to the fact that their brain has gone without oxygen for several minutes. Enter Gary, a man who was a doctor in a hospital and knew the hopelessness of his situation during the "uprising". If you can't beat them, join them! Gary hooks himself up to various machines and units so that his brain can continue getting oxygen while he goes through the deadly process of becoming "undead". When he wakes up, he is one of them, but has the capability to speak as well as still having full function of his motor skills. With balance and coordination intact, he embarks into the streets of Manhattan to see what the world has in store for him.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a man who is a former U.N. peacekeeper and helper of third world countries is facing a larger dilemma. Needing AIDS medicine for the Somalians leader, he embarks with a collection of female Somalia fighters to New York in hopes of retrieving the medicine from there...barring New York is still even accessible. Pushing his efforts is the fact his daughter is being held as collateral by the Somalian leader in the event he does not succeed.

The boat reaches New York, Gary makes his way among the dead, and an even greater supernatural evil lurks that could soon be the official "nail in the coffin" of the human race.

Wellington is a great storyteller when it comes to suspense. Despite that, he never gets over the top with detail but is able to blend in enough description that the overall tale flows well. One thing he does that really impresses me is the ability to make things different from the norm. Whether it comes to zombies in general, fighting scenes, survival strategies and ponderings of Earths past before the dead rose, he breaks away from the clichés and gives you a fresh, new portrayal of the zombie apocalypse.

Monster Island has characters that you will connect with. At times I will admit, there were a few occurrences where reality was stretched too far (particularly a quick showdown between an Army Ranger and the Peacekeeper) but I can let that slide, after all, it's a fictional tale and Wellington is someone I think we'll be hearing from for some time to come.