Tag: zombies

Monthly roundup – April 2023

Posted on by Traumadoll

April reads. Lots of bizarro, horror, Chainsaw Man, and a couple memoirs. Overall a good month of reading. Thoroughly enjoyed them all. As usual, books with full reviews will be linked, but all have at least a brief review on my Goodreads page. That said, there were some standouts. Her Orc Protector was so good. Loved the characters. You Sound Like a White Girl had me thinking about my life and identity as a mixed race woman. I won’t be writing a full review on that one because that is a whole conversation that I think a lot of people aren’t ready to have and a book review can’t do it justice. Stay tuned for some discussion though. Check out my full breakdown.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️:
Her Orc Protector, by Zoe Ashwood
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes: The Novelization, by Jeff Strand
Chainsaw Man, Vol. 11: Go Get ‘Em, Chainsaw Man, by Tatsuki Fujimoto
If You Died Tomorrow I Would Eat Your Corpse, by Wrath James White
You Sound Like a White Girl, by Julissa Arce

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️:
Russells in Time, by Kevin Shamel
Stillborn Gallery, by Axl Barnes
They Take Your Skin, by J.R. Curtis
Her Orc Mate, by Zoe Ashwood
Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner
Chainsaw Man Vols 5-10, by Tatsuki Fujimoto

Unrated due to pending review:
Am I a Monster, by J. Boote
Fight Tub, by William Pauley III
The Ballad of Old Joe Booth, by William Pauley III
Bound in Flesh: An Anthology of Trans Body Horror, by Lor Gislason
The Best of Bizarro Fiction: Vol. 2, by Planet Bizarro

Three of those pending reviews are ARCs, so they absolutely will get full reviews by the end of the week. They’re almost finished. I have a few others that are being published this month that I will get to soon as well. I will come back and edit in some links and put them in their proper spot on the ratings list once they’re ready, but I don’t want to tease with stars right now.

I finished up as much Chainsaw Man as I could find via Libby. I think there is a 12th volume, but it is not available to me just yet. I will say that I enjoyed the series much more than I expected. I would rate the series 4/5 overall, with the last volume I read being the strongest. My kid has already handed me a new stack of books to read, Vols 1-4 of Sailor Moon. She loves it when I share in her interests and I’m happy to oblige. So next in my exploration of manga is Sailor Moon.

I’m still dreaming of zombies, so I will get my fix ASAP. I had an author reach out to me via contact form and it just so happens that he writes zombies, so I’ll check that out. I do read every message and spend some time looking up books, but I rarely respond because the books I’m being pitched are not stuff I would pick up organically. I’m not big on fantasy and I’m picky about my romance/smut. And anything with a religious slant is not for me. I make a point to not pick up books that I know are not my thing because I want to be fair and honest in my reviews. But if you offer me zombies…well, who can resist zombies?

I’ve also started making some progress on the BoH Indie Brawl reading list. I’d already read 4 out of 32. Today I read another and tomorrow I’ll start on another. In an effort to motivate myself, I’ve resurrected the Cool Ghouls Book Club in Book Lovers Cafe. My horror selections don’t get a lot of attention because it’s not a horror oriented group, but every once in a while someone lets their freak flag fly and joins me for a buddy read. Maybe I’ll catch a few more over the next several months.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to share my stuff all over the internet. So yeah. Read some books and let’s talk about them.

Monthly roundup – December 2022

Posted on by Traumadoll

Last monthly roundup of the year. I read fewer books this month than usual due to the untimely demise of my kindle and some trouble focusing in general, but I still got to lots of great books. Mantis was my favorite, followed closely by both issues of The Obituaries and The Astronaut Dream Book. Not a bad one in the bunch though.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️:
Mantis
The Obituaries #2
The Obituaries #3
The Astronaut Dream Book

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️:
The rest

No rating:
One that I won’t name.

So let’s talk about some of these books. I read a lot of weird stuff. Some of it is weird by definition. Anything labeled bizarro is going to be super weird. I knew I was going to love the favorites listed above because I have loved everything I’ve read by those authors so far. But then there are books like the Pet Project series. The first book was recommended to me by Amazon or Goodreads (I don’t remember) because I read a lot of alien porn. This series was not alien porn, but it is solid sci-fi and I really enjoyed it. The series got better as it progressed. There’s a pretty significant time jump between books, but it feels like the natural progression of events.

I also read a lot of zombie books. I know a lot of them are the same story told by different people, but that’s part of why I like them so much. Still, when I read a book that takes a different approach to zombies, I’m all in. Diana Rowland’s White Trash Zombie series is one of those. The series follows a young woman who was turned by a cop who found her dying of an overdose. The zombies in this world are not mindless and go on to live normal lives. Well, as normal as can be expected for someone who needs to consume brains to keep from turning into flesh eating monsters. Not a bad book in this six volume series. I loved it, and even though it took me a year to get around to reading the last volume, I’ll miss Angel Crawford.

Monster romance is a relatively new genre for me. I’ve never really cared for traditional romance or smut and mostly just didn’t read it because the few that I’d tried were disappointing at best and boring at worst. About a year and a half ago, I saw Ice Planet Barbarians on my Goodreads feed. The person who was reading the series usually reads less fluffy stuff, but I’ve loved pretty much everything I’ve read based on her ratings so I gave IPB a go. And promptly fell down that rabbit hole. It turns out I do enjoy romance and smut, I’m just not interested in humans. Go figure. This month’s monster porn, Grunge and I’m in Love with Mothman, were excellent. More mythical creatures, please.

All in all, a great month of reads to wrap up a great year.

I read a book: Zombie Makeout Club Vol 1: DeathWish, by Peter Richardson

Posted on by Traumadoll

I’m not entirely sure what I expected going into this, but it’s not what I got. Zombie Makeout Club sounds like something out of Tina Belcher’s erotic friend fiction. What I learned, after reading the entire manga and then doing some googling, is that Zombie Makeout Club is a brand of clothing sold at places like Hot Topic and Spencer’s, catering to fans of manga and Junji Ito. The story itself is called DeathWish.

The art is cool, but the plot is lacking. This is a horror manga, so of course it has its share of gore and violence. There’s no world building. This is the first volume, so I expected a little more of that. It’s about a teenager who is brought back to life after committing suicide. The description of this book states that she is piecing together her fragmented memories and trying to find out why she was resurrected, but if I hadn’t read the description, I would not have gotten that from reading the book. The characters kept referring to a backstory that isn’t included in the book.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ for me. I found myself lingering between pages just exploring the art. Fans of Junji Ito are not going to be impressed. If you’ve ever read his work, you know his imaginative storytelling and artwork are on another level. However, I think it would be right at home in the hands of the folks who love the clothing brand.

Big thanks to Peter Richardson, Diamond Book Distributors/ABLAZE, and NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. You can pre-order Zombie Makeout Club Vol. 1 on Amazon in multiple formats and begin reading it on November 22, 2022.

I read a book: The undead possession series (book 1: Infestation), by Justin Boote

Posted on by Traumadoll

I love zombies.

Not as much as Samantha loves them though.

Anyone who reads zombies knows that a lot of them are the same. And I love them despite that sameness. But every once in a while you read one that has a little something that makes it stand out. This is one of those books. Not only do we have zombies, we have different levels of zombies. Zombies and what they call half breeds. There is real hope for a cure. There’s demon possession and a haunted house. There is also some zombie sex stuff, which doesn’t come off as erotic, but the imagery sure is vivid. Because this isn’t set in the USA, the survival experience is way different than most zombie books I’ve read. Fewer guns. No redneck survival groups dominating all remaining survivors. No finding huge trucks to plow their way through the zombie hordes. It’s a refreshing new (to me at least) take on zombies.

This volume ends on a cliffhanger. I think even if it hadn’t, I’d still want to continue the series.

You can find The Undead Possession Series and other Justin Boote books on Amazon for the time being, but they are migrating to Godless on September 17 and sold at a discount for the first five days, so pick them up there! I know I will!

Quick note about Godless: you can find tons of books by indie horror authors at low prices there. Godless offers a platform for authors to sell their books without the Amazon royalties trap, which ultimately means more money in author pockets. It also means not having to dance around Amazon censors and having alternate Amazon friendly cover art. I have purchased many books on Godless, and while I am not crazy about not being able to automatically upload my highlights and track my progress on Goodreads because compatibility issues, it is easy enough to load books onto my kindle and read in the way to which I’m accustomed. And I do like knowing that more of the money goes to the authors. Amazon doesn’t need your money.