Zomboy

My Review:

Overview:

Zomboy is a book by award-winning author Richard Scrimger about a zombie(duh). When Bob has a new odd student named Imre in his class, he thinks that he's hiding something. Bob's suspicions were confirmed when it was made public that Imre had no heart beat, and was a zombie. However, Imre isn't your average flesh eating monster. Imre is strong enough to carry a bus, has limbs that constantly fall off and most importantly, he is not interested in eating you for dinner. Bob's best friend Evil-O (Her real name is Olive but she likes it backwards) likes Imre very much, but Bob has trouble getting over the whole "undead" thing. After Imre saves Bob from a bully and an insane dog in one day, Bob begins to like Imre. Later, Bob discovers that Imre has a sister that's a regular, flesh eating zombie which is followed by her attempting  to eat Bob and Evil-O. Imre stops his sister before she manages to eat Bob and Evil-O and then decides to run away with his zombie sister. That's essentially the ending.

Characters:

The characters developed quite well, with the exception of Bob. Bob was an unintelligent germaphobe throughout the entire book, but out of the blue he solves this mystery and connects seemingly random things. This was completely out of his unintelligent characteristic and felt like the author was out of ideas to realistically progress the plot. The other main characters had consistent traits, but they didn't really change or develop. Also, each character had minimal physical features described, to the point that there's a secondary character with no plot importance whatsoever with more description than the main character. Speaking of secondary characters, they seemed like expressionless zombies (see what I did there?), and just seemed to be space fillers. 

Overall I give the characters a 2/5 for lack of logical development, description and unnecessary secondary characters. 

Voice:

The voice in this novel was Bob's, and it was was conveyed extremely well. Everything he said was awkward, which made the whole book funny. The dialogue of all of the main characters seemed to flow like a real conversation for the most part and was easy to understand. There were a few oddly worded sentences  here and there but other than that it was great.

I give this a 5/5 for realistic and humorous dialogue.

Setting:

This book took place in the town of Dresden, Ontario. The main characters go to many places in this town, including Bob's house, Imre's house, and primarily Their school. Out of these settings, only the location of Imre's house was explained with detail. The other settings were barely described at all, which made it harder to know what was going on. The settings themselves weren't confusing, but the poor portrayal of these places were. The setting did not play a particularly large part in the story, so I understand why there was such a lack of description. I like how this setting is a real place, but I dislike the lack of description.

I give this a 2/5 for good settings but poor detail.

Theme:

The theme of this book seemed to be acceptance and racism. The theme is acceptance in the way that people are trying to accept a zombie into society but certain people don't want a zombie near them. The theme is racism for the same reasons. These themes were apparent throughout the story, and were interestingly explored at unique angles throughout the book. The book was consistent with these themes for almost the entire story, and I quite liked it.

Overall I give it 5/5 for uniquely exploring an interesting and deep theme.

Plot:

The plot was creative and appealing. It was interesting to see the relationships between the 3 main characters change, and left you wanting to read more. The only down side of the plot was that it was somewhat uninteresting at times. The book was like this, until the ending. The end took everything great about the rest of the book, and ruined it. It went from an innocent book about a middle schooler fitting in to a gory slaughterfest in a matter of pages. Certain aspects of the book that you think would be explored at the end, like the hint of romance between characters were not even touched and left many loose ends. The ending ruined the entire message that the book delivered. The ending seemed rushed and much too unrealistic compared to the rest of the book. It seemed ridiculous, out of place, and ruined the entire book for me.

Overall I give it 2/5 for good plot that was ruined by the ending.

Final Mark:

I give Zomboy a 3.5/5, or B-. Certain aspects of this book were outstanding, but others were quite bad. My main problem with this book was the plot. I've already gone over this, but I think the ending was absolute garbage. The theme and voice were great, but that doesn't outweigh the mediocre characters, awful setting and bad plot. There's so much potential with this idea of a half-zombie, which makes this book even more disappointing. If the author fixed these unsatisfactory aspects of this book, it could easily be a 9/10, or even 10/10. Overall, this book has its pros and cons, and I wouldn't recommend this book.

That concludes my review on Zomboy. Hope you enjoyed!