Prior to his death in 2017, filmmaker George A. Romero - best known for single-handedly inventing the zombie genre as we know it with his 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead - was writing a novel titled The Living Dead. After his passing, Romero’s estate collaborated with author Daniel Kraus to complete it. Although perhaps not the most obvious choice, Kraus is no stranger to the genre nor working with its masters (having previously co-authored two books with Guillermo del Toro, including the novelization of The Shape of Water), and he more than rises to the challenge.
The Living Dead finds Romero returning to the initial zombie outbreak, a subject he previously explored twice in his films; first in Night of the Living Dead, then again in Diary of the Dead. The sprawling, 656-page tome is split into three acts: The Birth of Death, from patient zero through the eventful first weeks of the dead rising; The Life of Death, an overview of the decade that followed; and The Death of Death, which picks up 15 years after the outbreak.
Akin to Stephen King’s The Stand, the novel digs into the minutia of an assortment of characters’ backstories to the point where the reader feels as if they truly know them, then hops around between their journeys until many of them intersect. The first act is familiar to anyone who’s ever seen a zombie movie, but in the capable hands of Romero and Kraus, it’s never dull. The middle section is kept brief; a smart choice since Romero’s films cover that stage of the outbreak so adroitly. The final act is the most engrossing, as it traverses new territory previously unexplored in Romero’s oeuvre.
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