A review by xterminal
Drop Dead Gorgeous by Wayne Simmons
4.0
Wayne Simmons, Drop Dead Gorgeous (Permuted Press, 2008)
My experience with Permuted Press up till now has been David Moody's Autumn Quartet and a slew of press releases about books that have made me say, every time, “man, I have got to read this.” Oddly, I never saw a single press release for Drop Dead Gorgeous, the first novel from Irish novelist Wayne Simmons; I stumbled across it in my local Half Price Books. (There is a small-press horror fan in my area who routinely sells stuff there. Whoever you are, bless you.) I actually found three Permuted titles the same day and snatched them all up. I knew the other two (D. L. Snell's Roses of Blood on Barbwire Vines and Z. A. Recht's Thunder and Ashes) well by reputation, but this one I'd never heard of. So I cracked the cover on this one first. And after I'd finished it a couple of days later, the only word I could come up with was “DAY-um.” This is not at all what I expected from the original publisher of the Autumn books. This is bloody awesome.
First off: ignore the jacket copy, which makes it sound as if the story centers around Star, the tattoo artist who graces the wonderful (if amateurish) cover. Instead, like the Autumn books, Drop Dead Gorgeous is an ensemble drama rather along the lines of Autumn but somewhat better-structured. We start off with the sudden and unexplained death of billions (once again hearkening back to David Moody and the beginning of the small-press zombie revolution) and a handful of survivors, including Star, who eventually find one another. But we also have a second storyline that runs parallel involving a former Orangeman and a former IRA member who are forced together in leadership positions with another band of survivors in a smaller town a ways up the highway from the first band. The two don't cross until close to the end (though their proximity in the book tells you they eventually will), so essentially you've got two separate stories throughout. And they're both exceptionally well-written for this sort of thing.
Also, I did allude to Drop Dead Gorgeous as a zombie novel above. And it is, for about fifty pages, though the zombies are nothing at all like the ones you're used to. But the majority of Drop Dead Gorgeous contains not a single member of the walking dead. Simmons focuses on the survivors and nothing else for the first three-quarters of the book, and while hardcore zombie-heads will probably be disappointed by this, anyone else on the planet who picks this up will be very pleasantly surprised by how much care Simmons takes in drawing his characters. Yes, some of the coincidences are a little too neat, and there are some scenes that seem to exist solely to advance the plot, but Simmons weaves them in skillfully enough that if you're not paying attention, you may never notice.
Simply put: this is awesome. If you're at all a horror fan, you want to check this out. Simmons has dome something almost unheard-of in horror these days: he's actually written a novel that can be called “original”, and you can keep a straight face while saying it. I love this book. ****
My experience with Permuted Press up till now has been David Moody's Autumn Quartet and a slew of press releases about books that have made me say, every time, “man, I have got to read this.” Oddly, I never saw a single press release for Drop Dead Gorgeous, the first novel from Irish novelist Wayne Simmons; I stumbled across it in my local Half Price Books. (There is a small-press horror fan in my area who routinely sells stuff there. Whoever you are, bless you.) I actually found three Permuted titles the same day and snatched them all up. I knew the other two (D. L. Snell's Roses of Blood on Barbwire Vines and Z. A. Recht's Thunder and Ashes) well by reputation, but this one I'd never heard of. So I cracked the cover on this one first. And after I'd finished it a couple of days later, the only word I could come up with was “DAY-um.” This is not at all what I expected from the original publisher of the Autumn books. This is bloody awesome.
First off: ignore the jacket copy, which makes it sound as if the story centers around Star, the tattoo artist who graces the wonderful (if amateurish) cover. Instead, like the Autumn books, Drop Dead Gorgeous is an ensemble drama rather along the lines of Autumn but somewhat better-structured. We start off with the sudden and unexplained death of billions (once again hearkening back to David Moody and the beginning of the small-press zombie revolution) and a handful of survivors, including Star, who eventually find one another. But we also have a second storyline that runs parallel involving a former Orangeman and a former IRA member who are forced together in leadership positions with another band of survivors in a smaller town a ways up the highway from the first band. The two don't cross until close to the end (though their proximity in the book tells you they eventually will), so essentially you've got two separate stories throughout. And they're both exceptionally well-written for this sort of thing.
Also, I did allude to Drop Dead Gorgeous as a zombie novel above. And it is, for about fifty pages, though the zombies are nothing at all like the ones you're used to. But the majority of Drop Dead Gorgeous contains not a single member of the walking dead. Simmons focuses on the survivors and nothing else for the first three-quarters of the book, and while hardcore zombie-heads will probably be disappointed by this, anyone else on the planet who picks this up will be very pleasantly surprised by how much care Simmons takes in drawing his characters. Yes, some of the coincidences are a little too neat, and there are some scenes that seem to exist solely to advance the plot, but Simmons weaves them in skillfully enough that if you're not paying attention, you may never notice.
Simply put: this is awesome. If you're at all a horror fan, you want to check this out. Simmons has dome something almost unheard-of in horror these days: he's actually written a novel that can be called “original”, and you can keep a straight face while saying it. I love this book. ****