 Goto [ Index ] |
The Book of More Flesh
An All Flesh Must Be Eaten Zombie Anthology
This is the zombie-filled sequel to The Book of More Flesh, which came out in 2002. According to the introduction, when Eden Studios asked for submissions for the first volume, the response was so overwhelming that they were astounded. And they received nearly 300 submissions for this sequel, so in theory its contents should be the cream of the crop. But just how good is it? How hard to put down? How likely to eat your brain?
First off, they obviously wanted a wide variety of content. There are darkly humorous stories, sci-fi tales, traditional zombie horror stories, and more. The zombies range from the merely pathetic to the terrifyingly unstoppable to the downright weird. A couple teeter on the edge of not really qualifying as zombies, but all in all the zombie theme is present everywhere.
Physically, the book is an oversized paperback (the dimensions are about 5.5" by 8.5") with a softbound cover and 318 pages. There are 23 different tales of the Zombie, an introduction by James Lowder (the editor) and some notes about the contributors. The individual stories range from about seven pages long to thirty. I hadn't heard of any of the contributors before, but that's not surprising; I probably wouldn't unless they managed to get someone really famous. The cover art is in the same style as the RPG itself, with an almost abstract design and a single, almost stylized zombie figure.
But the stories themselves are the real crux of the matter. I read through the book over a period of a few days, generally reading a couple of stories and then taking a break. There weren't any stinkers here. All of the tales were at least decently entertaining and a couple were actually disturbing. No really terrifying nail-biters, though, and no gore-fests, either. Mostly it's, um... I hate to say "light hearted" considering all of the death and despair going on, but they definitely tried to avoid anything that would be outright depressing or disgusting. They're just entertainment.
"Sitting With the Dead" by Shane Stewart and "Night Shift" by Rebecca Brock are probably my favorites. The latter is a traditional zombies-are-attacking drama, with outnumbered humans desperately trying to keep the ravening monsters outside of their sanctuary, while the former is set in a world where the dead have been coming back as zombies for so long that society has long since adjusted to it. Now when someone dies, it's traditional for them to get a close relative to sit with the corpse, talk to them as long as they can retain control of their faculties, and put them down if they can't. In fact, there were several tales that were basically set in worlds where the dead came back but didn't manage to destroy everything, and now folks have gotten used to the idea and are just dealing with it.
"Inheriting Red" (Alexander Marsh Freed) and "The Ethical Treatment of Meat" (Claude Lalumiere) were probably the most disturbing to me, and that may be because they both depicted worlds where the zombies clearly won, but there are still some living survivors left. "Life Sentence" (David Dvorkin) depicted a world where the government zombifies people as a form of capital punishment; the criminal dies, but their corpse can be put to work anyway. That one I found a little unsatisfying, but it's probably because there's a central mystery about the uses to which the zombie workers are being put that is intriguing but never resolved. And on the more humorous side, we have "Brainburgers and Bile Shakes: A Love Story" (Jim C. Hines) and "Goddamn Redneck Surfer Zombies" (Michael J. Jasper). There's a nice variety here.
Now as far as RPG material goes, not all of these are liable to provide useful material for your All Flesh Must Be Eaten campaign. In a few stories, the zombies are pretty much unique creatures or are otherwise no real threat to humanity in general. And if you're running a traditional "flee from the dead" game, many of these will just be too different to really provide much fodder. There aren't that many "traditional" zombie stories... instead, we get a lot of different variations in different time periods. Zombies in space. Zombies at sea. Zombie-themed amusement parks. Entertaining? Yes. Inspiring? Yes. Full of plots to steal for your game? Well... not so much.
All in all, though, The Book of More Flesh is not intended as a gaming supplement. It's exactly what it claims to be: a book of zombie-themed short stories, and good ones at that. It's priced at $16.95 and honestly, if you just can't get enough zombies in your literature (I know the so-called "Classics" that they make kids read these days are shockingly short of the walking dead), this is a bargain at any price. I give it a 4 for style and a 4 for substance.
You can check out their website at:
Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.
