Book Review: Bad Ass Zombie Road Trip by Tonia Brown
Badass Zombie Road Trip by Tonia Brown
Jonah Benton lives a relatively quiet life in a small American town. He had a dead end job and despite being smart and intelligent, lives constantly in the shadow of his best friend, Dale, who is dumb, obnoxious and attracts members of the opposite sex like flies to an overflowing litter tray. When they embark on a trip to play a gig in Reno, Jonah takes a detour into California to reunite Dale with his estranged father, and it’s at this point that events take a turn for the worse. Jonah is forced to make a deal with Satan to save his best friends soul, putting his own on the line in the process. Jonah, the newly zombiefied Dale and a stripper called Candy, must travel across the United states to find Dale’s missing soul, while being pursued by the Police and the Mafia. However Satan is not going to make things easy for them.
I will admit that I am sick of zombies. There are only so many books or movies that I can get through that involves a small group of survivors holding out against the threat of a zombie horde, so I started reading this with a little trepidation. I need not have worried. Badass Zombie Road Trip is a very different book from the usual zombie fare. For one thing, it’s absolutely hilarious. Horror comedy is not an easy thing to pull off, but this book delivers it in spades. The banter between Jonah and Dale is natural and highly amusing, but things really pick up once Dale’s soul is taken and the pair have to start dealing with Dales new state of existence. Such as his hunger for living human flesh and the fact that he has begun to rot. The scene where they try to cope with the stench by gluing feminine hygiene products to the indignant Dale is absolute genius, as is a section where Dales attempt to obtain some food results in his intended target (a small yappy dog) stealing one of his body parts and burying it in a back yard.
There are not many scares in this book, and despite the subject matter it is very firmly on the comedy side of the fence. That’s not to say that there is not plenty of tension and once I started the book, I found it to be a real page turner.
Overall, Badass Zombie Road Trip does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a funny, sometimes moving, sometimes gross and always entertaining road novel, which happens to have a zombie as one of the protagonists.
If this sounds like your sort of thing, then you could do a lot worse than picking up this novel.
8/10
You can buy Bad Ass Zombie Road Trip by clicking on the link below
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