Welcome to My 31 Days Of Thrills And Chills 2019! I did this the last few years and so excited to do it again. I’ll be sharing reviews and lots of extra spooky stuff every day leading up to Halloween. I hope you’ll join me!
I’m sharing all kinds of books, movies, and other spooky stuff for every day in October. Gots to get those scares on for the 31st!
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Where The Dead Go To Die
by Aaron Dries and Mark Allan Gunnells
Genre: Horror
My Review
It’s years after the infection started. The smilers are no longer hunted and killed on sight. Instead, they are tended to in facilities, allowed to spend remaining days with as much dignity as possible. Care givers tend to their needs until their last breath.
Emily is one of those care givers. She’s there to help them, give comfort and support, and protect them from others and themselves. She thinks she’s an ordinary woman. A single mother trying to make ends meet. I think she is brave. There’s still a risk of infection if careless. She watches as the night screams fade and the patients change. become the smilers, right before the end. Doesn’t shy from the dirty work. She’s already been through it on a much more personal level.
Where The Dead Go To Die is what I call a quiet horror story. It’s those hushed little scenes in between the ordinary ones that make the most impact. I know they have importance and stay in the back of mind, to be brought out later when the authors uncloak more.
I was so swept up in this story. The political machinations and moral ramifications bounced around in my head. The authors made me forget this was fiction and made me really think, Think how I would navigate this world, How I would feel about the smilers. Whether I might be one of those I looked down upon in the story or one of those I looked up to. How could I know? That questioning was very deep. Several times I actually stopped reading to contemplate what I’d just experienced.
And all through this quiet horror story, I knew bad things were coming. The quiet would be shattered by things horrific. The infrastructure would crumble. Things wouldn’t be contained. And the horror would become a roar.
This was an original and engrossing spin on zombie stories. I came away from it thinking I had to see what else these two authors had written. And I’m still catching myself thinking about what occurred in these pages.
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Synopsis
There are monsters in this world. And they used to be us. Now it’s time to euthanize to survive in a hospice where Emily, a woman haunted by her past, only wants to do her job and be the best mother possible.
Post-infection Chicago. Christmas.
Inside The Hospice, Emily and her fellow nurses do their rounds. Here, men and women live out their final days in comfort, segregated from society, and are then humanely terminated before fate turns them into marrow-craving monsters known as ‘Smilers.’ Outside these imposing walls, rabid protesters swarm with signs, caught up in the heat of their hatred.
Emily, a woman haunted by her past, only wants to do her job and be the best mother possible. But in a world where mortality means nothing, where guns are drawn in fear and nobody seems safe anymore – at what cost will this pursuit come? And through it all, the soon to be dead remain silent, ever smiling. Such is their curse.
This emotional, political novel comes from two of horror’s freshest voices, and puts a new spin on an eternal topic: the undead. In the spirit of George A Romero meets Jack Ketchum, Where the Dead Go to Die it is an unforgettable epilogue to the zombie genre, one that will leave you shaken and questioning right from wrong…even when it’s the only right left.
It won’t be long before that snow-speckled ground will be salted by blood.
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Click on the covers for more October Thrills And Chills reviews.
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