Dead Tropics

A while back I made a comment in one of my posts about the prospect of soccer moms using machetes to negotiate grocery prices. This is the story of one of those moms.

Author Sue Edge recently shared a copy of her novel Dead Tropics with me, which, to my immense pleasure, proved to be a rather fantastic contribution to zombie literature. Delivered in a wonderfully natural voice, the story explores the trials and challenges of a determined mother in the midst of an undead outbreak.

I should probably begin by admitting that I was particular delighted to find that Dead Tropics was no fluffy "mommy-and-the-kids-go-on-an-adventure" story. Generally speaking, the tale was violent, gory, and ruthlessly unforgiving. There was no sugar-coating or punches pulled in the telling of the encounters with the undead.

Without too much in the way of overly-romanticized heroics, Dead Tropics is a relatively down-to-earth tale of a mother doing absolutely whatever required to protect her children. The worried mom's voice resonates strongly in the telling of the story (not to mention a little persistent romantic interest), but it was applied reasonably and made for an enjoyable narrative.

Warning *Spoilers*
To share just a bit of what Dead Tropics has to offer, I must say that Ms. Edge conjured a wonderfully nightmarish hell for her characters to contend with. Straight-off-the-bat, a delightfully vicious hospital outbreak sets the tone and pace. Later, the decimation of military forces gives perspective to the event's magnitude.

A scene of particular beauty involves the characters' escape from a grid-locked freeway of civilians fleeing a wave of the undead. As any follower of zombie lore knows, a jammed up freeway can rapidly turn into an inescapable meat grinder. However, in this example, the story's characters take a rather interesting course of flight by crawling under the stopped vehicles, directly into the oncoming wave of undead.

I'm not sure about the odds of successfully navigating the front line of carnage unnoticed, but I suppose one sometimes needs to take a bold gamble to have any hope at all. Regardless, the scene Ms. Edge painted was just beautiful. As the characters crawled under the vehicles, through the attacking wave, their surroundings read like a typhoon of blood and screams. A down-pouring of gore in every direction. It was pretty spectacular.

On broader note, Ms. Edge does a nice job of highlighting the issue of people not heeding warnings about the coming danger. To be honest, even as a rather zombie attentive individual, I likely wouldn't be too quick to start boarding up the windows if some panicked individual ran past me screaming "Zombies! Flee for your lives!". The odds are in favor of that individual just being batsh*t crazy.

So how do you warn folks? Well, don't yell "Zombies!". People aren't going to budge an inch for that kind of crazy talk. However, it shouldn't be too difficult to invent a reasonably plausible warning about some spreading illness causing violent behavior. It may not move them to flee immediately, but it should at least put folks on alert and offer them a slightly better chance at survival.

Also as an interesting aside, travel by water is given a lot of consideration in the story. There is a lot of swimming, floating down waterways, and flight by sea. Issues surrounding water are fairly common, but Ms. Edge includes a rather nice number of varying, and interesting, circumstances in Dead Tropics.

Well, I think I'll wrap this up here. I've given away a few choice tidbits from Dead Tropics, but it is only a taste of what the story has to offer. I must also extend my sincere compliment to Ms. Edge. Her novel does a wonderful job of addressing a great range of zombie topics, and spins a fantastic tale in the process. For what my humble endorsement is worth, I whole-heartedly encourage folks to check it out. Enjoy!