Monster Island, in various instances showed an inspirationally creative take on zombies and the genre itself. It must first be noted that Monster Island is the first book of a trilogy in which follows, Monster Nation and Monster ; I had to continually remind myself with this fact for I felt, while reading the book, that the events were only the beginning of a journey. With that being said a short synopsis or summary is in order. Monster Island begins with a foggy boat ride where we meet our protagonist, Dekalb and a group of female guerrilla soldiers from Somalia. You learn that the boat is taking a trip to Manhattan where New York along with the majority of the world has been overrun by a zombie apocalypse. You learn that Dekalb is on a mission to retrieve HIV medicine for the leader of Woman’s Republic of Somaliland. Along the group’s search for the UN building, where Dekalb thinks the AZT will be, they run into hoards of zombies. When they finally reach the UN building they notice that there’s a biohazard mark and piles upon piles of dead zombies in the water before the building and decide against it, which is where they decide to go to a hospital. While in the hospital one of the girls gets eating and killed by a zombie while the other gets bitten and infected. After the hospital they meet Gary, a former med student and self-inflicted zombie who still retains his cognitive reflexes. The group takes Gary on as part of the team under supervision and flees to the park where they face various obstacles, such as ex-riot control zombies. From here the group runs to the Virgin music store and barricades themselves in, with the fear of the lingering zombies outside. While inside, a series of events occur which leads to Gary’s death, or re-death and the book ends.
There are few points that deserve a second look and commendations for their creativity and innovations. One for which I cannot recall seeing in any other zombie story was the appearance of the ex riot police. It’s a clever idea that he made work logically and it allowed for a harder obstacle, aka harder zombie, to kill. Another interesting thing it seems the author did was tell the same story from two different perspectives and then eventually conjoin the point of view. This proves to be an interesting concept because from the view of Gary not only do you begin to sympathize with the zombie but you also receive an ample description of what drives the zombies, the urge behind the hunger. And on the other hand you have the perspective of Dekalb which is more or less the main perspective we relate too because he is human. Though the author gives sufficient reasons to sympathize with both, on one hand you have Gary who forcibly made himself a zombie because he truly believed that he was the last zombie and that he would rather join them than be eaten by them. And on the other hand you have Dekalb who you sympathize with because he’s reluctantly forced into helping the Woman’s Republic of Somaliland so that he can get his daughter back and gain citizenship. It’s sort of genius because the author plays on basic human emotions to invoke feelings for the characters, hence why you feel sad when Gary gets shot in the head. The last point, which only seems necessary to note is the descriptive quality that the author uses. In Monster Island, the author uses such effective description that his imagery is almost pristine; it actually takes you to New York and allows you to feel what both characters are feeling.
