Book Review: Zombie Island: A Shakespeare Undead Novel (Shakespeare Undead 2)

[terriko]

Remember me mentioning this appalling-sounding novel about Vampire Shakespeare? well curiousity got the better of me, and I did click "Request it!" and they actually chose to send me a review copy. Here's the review I provided:

This book is like a B-movie inspired by the anachronistic touches of Moulin Rouge, only the sex scenes are outright un-sexy. It's a cheesy mish-mash of modern pop culture and Shakespearean English. It's both totally appallingly bad and yet sometimes brilliant, often funny and probably the strangest adaptation of The Tempest ever.

If you wanted anything remotely serious or delicate, this is not the book for you. (And what were you doing buying a book about Vampire Shakespeare fighting zombies with his Dark Lady anyhow?) I think it has the worst romance I've read in years (and I have a project with friends where we read terrible romance novels out loud) but if you read it all with the pacing and imagine the wooden acting of a low-budget film, it's worth a laugh. Recommended only if you like bad movies, silliness, and dubious mashups of pop culture and literature, since this rests on the knife edge of "bad" and "so bad it's good." I enjoyed it, but your mileage may vary.

I'll be keeping my copy for The Project, but I'm quite happy to lend it out to anyone else who foolishly thinks that Vampire Shakespeare and his Dark Lady battling zombies during The Tempest sounds like a good idea. I'm not sure if this is warning or endorsement, but it's only a few velociraptors or beagles shy of sounding like it could have been written by beable. Now you know.