좀비들

Zombie-Healing

Lost in depression after his brothers death, a lonely antenna inspector finds friendship, fulfilment, zombies and himself.

It’s quirky, things do not make a lot of sense. As the author writes at the very end, it’s not a book about zombies. (Even though it’s about zombies)

I liked the premise and enjoyed reading it even though it got a little slow at times. For example, the entire first third of the book I was wondering if the zombies were actual zombies or like metaphorical ones. It took quite some time before the main character even met one.

My main gripe is that a lot of the action often turned out to be anticlimactic. There were loads of scenes that seemed like something was going to happen but ended up fizzling out in conversation. Or things happening off-screen (so to speak) only being relayed to the main character, instead of him experiencing or finding them out himself.

Especially towards the end as the narrative picked up, this became frustrating. These moments seem like plot devices, made to incite some sort of reaction in the characters, evoke a conversation, emotion, description or scene that the author wanted to write. Rather than serving a greater storyline.

The lack of sensible zombie worldbuilding adds to this. What I mean by that is, it quickly became apparent that the characters did not care much about the how the why or the who of the situation after meeting their first zombie. There are many situations were the main characters encounter people who most definitely know more about the specifics but do not ask anything. At most they get told by these characters whatever the author wants the reader to know. Those same characters also withhold information and tell it at times where it makes no sense to do one or the other. Again, using plot devices whilst sacrificing consistency and realistic character depictions. Maybe the author wanted to write quirky characters but it seems to me more like they turned out quirky because the author had to constantly make odd choices seem like something the characters would do.

It’s the little things too, for example, that they use a vaccine as a zombieism cure. That makes no sense at all and is not what a vaccine is. And the big things, like not considering what zombies mean on a scale larger than the town this is taking place in. Especially since the attempts at secrecy are very lax.

Just not well thought out worldbuilding. I don’t mind if the zombies are kind of secondary to the point of the book, but make it make sense please.

As a last critique, there is just no good reason to call an entire character nothing but 똥보130.

For the good parts, I actually didn’t think it was badly written. Prose wise it’s easy to follow without being simple, some of the descriptions are interesting and for the most part I always wanted to know what would happen next or how things would turn out. The first half had this melancholic but mysterious atmosphere to it that I appreciated.

Would love to know what others think!