A Zombie Guide, Of Corpse!

reviewed by John Reppion

By C.D. Breznier

Published by Trafford Publishing, 2007

Paperback: 326 pages

C. D. Brenizer is the author of sci-fi novels Cloud of Death and Cloud Death 2: Moon Rescue (sadly, I haven’t read either of them but the titles are great!) as well as being something of a zombie fan. In the foreword of his self penned paperback A Zombie Guide, Of Corpse! C. D. explains “The reason I started this guide was mainly because I really enjoy zombies […] and also because I had searched and did not find a complete zombie guide. […] What I wanted to do was to present all aspects of the zombie genre in our culture, as completely as possible,” definitely not a task to be undertaken lightly.

The book sets out to cover as many different zombie related topics as possible and, with section titles ranging from Voodoo Religion and Origins to Zombies in Marvel Comics to Zombie Party Hosting, C. D. certainly gives it his best shot. Brenizer’s opening section, Zombies in History – A Historical Review of Zombies, Real and Imaginary, covers much of the same territory as I did in my article The Zombie in Folklore, Myth and Legend which was published here on Revenant Magazine a while back [LINK]. This is not exactly a criticism but gave me a taste of what was to follow, namely that, as interesting as much of the information contained within AZGOC! is, it is often stuff that I have already seen covered elsewhere. The book’s value therefore lies in its Swiss Army Knife type approach to the zombie genre; packing information and reviews of films, video games, and board games along side detailed notes of the different kinds of zombies seen in all of the above, folkloric tradition and so on. Indeed, viewed as a kind of Zombies for Dummies (in the tradition of the X For Dummies books that seem to fill a large amount of shelf space in Borders) of a Bluffer’s Guide to the genre, AZGOC! does its job admirably.

AZGOC!’s production values are not fantastic; the book is lovely great big, heavy lump of a paperback and very professionally printed but because it’s essentially self published (Trafford Publishing being a similar publisher to the perhaps better known Lulu.com) there is a bit of an over use of clip art and stock imagery. To add to this problem many of the images elsewhere in the book are very low-resolution in an effort to make sure that their presentation “qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law”. These might seem like petty things to pick up on but, as I believe AZGOC!’s true value lies in being an easily accessible reference for someone interested in the genre (as opposed to someone obsessed with it who already has all the other zombie books and regularly visits all the zombie websites), I think a bit more of a commercial look might really improve the book’s browsability. That said, AZGOC! has obviously been a labor of love for C.D. and he’s to be commended for making the effort in compiling this weighty directory of points of undead interest. The book, by its author’s own admission, is not all-inclusive but it unquestionably does its best and would serve as an ideal primer for many a prospective zombie fan.

A Zombie Guide, Of Corpse! is available to order online at www.trafford.com