Dead of Night Synopsis: A prison doctor injects a condemned serial killer with a formula designed to keep his consciousness awake while his body rots in the grave. But all drugs have unforeseen side-effects. Before he could be buried, the killer wakes up. Hungry. Infected. Contagious. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang…but a bite. – Goodreads
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Dead of Night Review
Dead of Night is a difficult book to review. On one hand, it’s a great horror story. It has all the makings of one of those zombie movies that would have you on the edge of your seat. On the other hand, it’s… well, it’s filled with crude language. Crude enough that it actually takes away from the story as a whole. The cursing is just… over the top. There’s no other word for it. But… Dead of Night is not a kids book, so there’s no reason that he shouldn’t have filled it with cursing if that’s what he wanted to do. That’s the style he chose to write in for this book, and that’s that. You can like it, or not, but you can’t say it makes it a bad book. Just a foul-language’d one.
There were some great lines.
Blair said, “No, General Zetter, it is proof of the absence of life.”
This line sent a shiver through me.
“God help me, but yes… I am talking about zombies.”
There was a biting (I’m not asking pardon for that pun) bit of discourse on we treat Death Row prisoners that I particularly appreciated. Probably the scariest thing about Dead of Night is the that the ‘souls’ of the zombies are still in them. That they’re trapped inside their head, watching what their bodies are doing and unable to stop them. I was actually relieved for one particular zombie at the end when he finally got killed. Also, the action really is basically non-stop from the get-go and Homer Gibbon is just… awful. Truly awful.
Overall, Dead of Night is not a bad book, but in terms of appeal – it’s lacking. Rot and Ruin or Patient Zero (both by the same author) are much more ‘friendly’ choices. Jonathan Maberry certainly writes a wide variety of zombie books. It’s a given, then, that some will be hits and some will be misses. This one, in my opinion, is a miss. I won’t be continuing the series.
Dead of Night is available on Amazon.
Title: Dead of Night | Series: Dead of Night | Author: Jonathan Maberry (site) | Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin | Pub. Date: 2011-10-25 | Pages: 358 | ISBN13: 9780312552190 | Genre: Horror | Language: English | Foul Language Level: Very High | Triggers: None | Rating: 3 out of 5 | Source: Library | Date Read: 2016-6-26 |
The book sounds like a great premise, adding something to the common zombie novel. I wonder why Maberry chose to “work blue” in this one, as I have read some of his other stuff and I don’t feel the grittiness suffers from lack of cursing. Do you think he chose to do it because of the prison setting?
The prison setting isnt really present in this book. The dude was turned in a prison, but the majority of the book is set in small town. So I don’t think that plays into it. I think maybe it was just a stylistic choice bc of the red neck setting with a foul mouth protagonist?