Working from Dante’s “Inferno” to draw out the reality behind the fantasy, author Kim Paffenroth unfolds the horrifying true events that led Dante to fictionalize the account of his lost years … For seventeen years of his life, the exact whereabouts of the medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri are unknown to modern scholars. It is known that during this time he traveled as an exile across Europe, working on his epic poem, “The Divine Comedy.” In his masterpiece he describes a journey through the three realms of the afterlife. The most famous of its three volumes, “Inferno,” describes hell. During his lost wanderings, Dante stumbled upon an infestation of the living dead. The unspeakable acts he witnessed–cannibalism, live burnings, evisceration, crucifixion, and dozens more–became the basis of all the horrors described in Inferno. Afraid to be labeled a madman, Dante made the terrors he experienced into a more “believable” account of an otherworldly adventure filled with demons and mythological monsters. But at last, the real story can finally be told.

Get it here

This is my first contest ever, so forgive me if I seem nervous. Ahem. Okay, so that book seen above has been kicking around my house for a while now. Its a good fun read and I want to give it away. But not to just anyone. This book is going to one of the first 10 people that submit their horror themed webcomic at www.tophorrorcomics.com
The rules are simple – go to www.tophorrorcomics.com and submit your webcomic. If you don’t have a webcomic to submit then you’ll just have to wait until my next contest. Sorry. Them’s the breaks.

When there are 10 submissions I will roll one of my 10 sided dice and that number will determine which person wins.
I’ll email the winner for their mailing address and send it in the mail.

Sound good? Get going.

Enjoy!

You know you’ve read too many zombie books when you start forgetting them…. I read Plague Zone about a year ago. I just remembered when looking through StumbleUpon for sites tagged zombie books. Plague Zone is another online serialized novel by David Wellington, and you can read it here.

This story was much different than the stories in the Monster series. The zombies were your standard slow lumbering stupid gonna eat you type. Just how I like them . It was hard to stop reading this story, as there were many parts packed with suspense. It doesn’t take long for events to start unfolding the first zombie experience is pretty early in the story.

The story goes as most zombie stories do. A plague begins, and crawls its way through the United States. However this one isn’t covering someone looking for a cure, or the person who will bring an end to all the humans left. The story focuses on one man, who wants to permanently kill one zombie. Being a husband and a father it was pretty easy for me to relate, it was also very hard for me to think of what I would do and think if I were put in a similar situation. Overall the story was good. It wasn’t as good as the Monster Island trilogy but its still definitely worth a read. I really was not satisfied with the end, it almost felt like things needed to be wrapped up pretty fast, as if the number 60 had to be the last chapter.

The main thing that makes it hard to judge harshly is the fact its free for anyone to read. Again you can check the story out here.

Rating 3/5

Monster Island I actually posted a review of this book on this site, and you can read it in its entirety from David Wellingtons site. This book is also for sale from a number of retailers including Amazon. I highly recommend it.

If you enjoy Monster Island, then you will definitely want to read the next installment in the series (which is actually a prequel) Monster Nation . Of course if you want to actually own the book you can buy it from Amazon, among other retailers.

Hopefully you enjoyed the first two in the series, if so you will be compelled to read the third and last book in the trilogy, Monster Planet. And like the two before it, it is available through Amazon.com

While compiling this list it seems as if many of the books these days are hard to come by online. The Morningstar Saga’s first book (Plague of the Dead)actually used to be free, and I was a little disapointed to see it isn’t the case anymore. However while browsing Z.A. Rechts site I did find a list of free zombie fiction hosted here

Of course I have to mention my own site which has a small collection of zombie fiction. The section is inoperable at the moment but you can see a few of the stories here

I’m sure most of you reading this are aware of these novels and think I may have forgotten one, before I get emails on it, Autumn is actually not free anymore I highly recommend it as I was able to read it when it was available as a PDF.

If any of you find any more for free let me know I would love to add them to the book list! (which is still under construction)

If you remember both groups were on their way to Omaha to get to the facility in order to start working on some sort of vaccine. The book starts off pretty much where the last one left off, with Stiles evading the infected in the first chapter. You are then taken between each group from chapter to chapter following their progress.

First Ill go into what I didn’t like about the book. It felt almost too comfortable to me as I read I felt like I pretty much knew who the author wouldn’t kill off so when they were in tough situations I didn’t worry. The ending while I wont spoil it for you, it just didn’t seem realistic to me. It was one of those “Of Course!” moments. Overall I felt the book didn’t have the same suspense as the first story did (imagining thousands upon thousands of infected coming at you in a desert is hard to top), but that’s not to say that it didn’t have of its own moments.

I did like the feel that the country was utterly destroyed. It really helps with the overall atmosphere of the story. There is also a sense of trepidation when the survivors do happen to wander into a city. I really like the climatic part of the story when the survivors (or whats left of them) do reach Omaha. That kept me pretty entertained, plus the fact that I live in Omaha made it pretty interesting.

Overall it was a good book, helped to stave off the boredom during the trip. Also I received the book as a gift for attending Omaha’s zombie walk, which was awesome considering I have been wanting to read this book for a while now.

Overall Id have to give the book a 3.5/5

The story starts off with Dekalb floating into Manhattan one month after New York has fallen to the zombie hordes. Why would anyone travel to New York during a zombie epidemic you ask? Well currently Delkab lives with his daughter Sarah in Somalia. He needs to get medication for AIDS for the warlords who run Somalia in order to earn his place in their society.

There’s many things that set this book apart from other zombie books in the genre. One very interesting thing is the way some zombies are able to hold on to their true consciousness. If you have oxygen flowing to your brain as you are “dying” you will return fully aware, theres more to it than that but I wont spoil the story.  Also why is the main character currently living in Somalia? Well think about it, there are a lot of weapons, people are trained through everyday life on how to live in poor conditions with danger looming. This is also another thing I liked about the story. Something I dont think most people would think, in most stories the epidemic seems to start in Africa. These are some of the things which make this book so interesting.

There’s really not anything I can think of to say bad about it. If you like zombie novels you NEED to read this one, of course then you will need to read the other two. Originally you could read this for free on the site (chapters were released every Mon, Wed, and Fri), but now you can also buy the print copy which I recommend in order to support free serialized novels.

Rating: 5/5

Buy the book now

Visit the website http://www.brokentype.com/monster/