The Living Dead 2 (2010)

"Is it necrophilia if you're both dead?"

Reading this now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, makes me think how it could be worse! 😀 Reading some of these on the day that celebrates Jesus rising from the dead makes me think that it could be better too! The undead on these pages are not so forgiving!

Lots of short stories in here! Some hits, some misses, but all zombies! You have stories from "The Walking Dead"'s Robert Kirkman and "World War Z"'s Max Brooks, among many others. My favorite in this collection was "Twenty-Three Snapshots of San Francisco" by Seth Lindberg. I also enjoyed "The Rapeworm" by Charles Coleman Finlay quite a bit! And for a complete and total gross out, please enjoy "Zombie Gigolo" by S.G. Browne! ex. - "If you've never had maggots crawling around inside your rectal cavity and feasting on your subcutaneous fat, you probably wouldn't understand."

No Mr. Browne. No I wouldn't. ( )

The zombie theme has never been more actual as it is these days, with literature and both screens – the big and the small one – often employing it for stories, although it’s difficult to find tales that try to look beyond the far-too-easy shock of blood and gore, focusing rather on the psychology of characters and their reaction to the apocalypse they are desperately trying to survive.
Recently I discovered a sampler of this book through the Baen Free Library showcasing some of the stories contained in one of two larger anthologies dedicated to the living dead, and decided to take a look: some of the offerings were quite weird – like the one that sees events from the point of view of an Amish community (“Rural Dead” by Bret Hammond), or the one whose premise is that all of humanity dies and wakes up as zombies, and follows the plight of a family as they try to get on with their non-lives as much as they can (“Who We Used to Be” by David Moody) – but a few truly left their mark on my imagination, my favorites being the two I’ve chosen to showcase [...]

Full review at SPACE and SORCERY Blog ( )

Just as with The Living Dead, this collection is absolutely fabulous, proving that good zombie fiction can be good fiction, period! ( )

I remember being quite impressed by the first Living Dead anthology. The stories were highly literate, and it did some creative and interesting things with the zombie theme, featuring less straightforward horror stuff than you might expect and more zombies-as-metaphor and other kinds of nuanced explorations. By and large, I'd say this follow-up volume is more of the same. I do think maybe there's a slightly higher proportion of standard horror elements and zombie apocalypse survival (or lack-of-survival) stories than in the first one, although it's hard to say for sure, since it's likely that the more unusual stories are the ones that have stuck in my mind the longest Even if that's true, though, it's not a bad thing if those elements are handled well, and the best stories in this anthology handle them very well, indeed. While there are one or two pure action pieces -- which I found among the weakest in the book, although that's doubtless a matter of personal preference -- there are many more that pack a significant emotional punch. And there are a number of stories that provide interesting new perspectives on the zombie concept. (Adam-Troy Castro's "The Anteroom," which features former zombies waking up in the afterlife, once again possessed of reason, and remembering everything they did, is a brilliant and horrible example.)

I'd say the quality of the stories ranges from okay all the way up to great, which is not a bad target for an anthology to hit. And there's a wide variety of themes, settings, and approaches, so there should be something here for just about anybody. Well, anybody who's willing to read about zombies, anyway. The one thing you won't find much of here, though, is cheesiness or self-parody. Generally speaking, these are stories that take their zombies seriously, and most of them are all too well aware just how awful and depressing a real zombie apocalypse would be. ( )

Great collection. I bought it for the Mira Grant story, because I've come gradually to the point where I like Mira Grant so much that if she wrote the side of a cereal box I would buy it. And I wasn't disappointed. (As a side note, her name is actually a pseudonym for Seanan McGuire, but I can't vouch for her awesomeness under her own name, simply because I haven't read anything under her real name yet, horror being more up my alley lately than urban fairy tales - but I do plan to read those too, at some point soon.)

The other stories were great too. Some standouts include one composed only of description of photos taken during one young man's experience of the zombie apocalypse - reminiscent of Cloverfield for some reason (big city? sideways view? confused protagonists who never have all the answers?)Another featured a group of survivors in an abandoned motel in the desert, and showed how humans can be defeated by the alliances they choose to make with each other. When you choose to save the ones you care about, you'd better make sure that someone is left who cares to save you. A moral that would also be applicable to a third standout story - the first one, "Alone, Together," written by the author of the series 'The Walking Dead', a comic book series, as well as a tv show I'm dying to see (no pun intended) as soon as Netflix releases it on instant or sends me the disks!

This is well worth the small price of the e-book copy. ( )