A review by books_n_pickles
How to Make a Zombie: The Real Life (and Death) Science of Reanimation and Mind Control by Frank Swain
3.0
I must admit, part of the pleasure of reading this book was seeing the glances I got on the subway--uh-oh, that scrawny woman is planning to take over the world! Yep, watch out.
I even had one conversation to that effect, when a guy struck up a conversation asking about my plans. Naturally, I will not reveal them to anyone but my evil henchcat. The chief delight of the conversation was getting to shut down his attempted mansplanining by countering with details of Haitian zombie beliefs--because I'm the one reading the book, dang it, so don't you try to tell me that like it's news.
Anyway, this was a very fun book to read. It was wide-ranging, from actual zombie culture, to efforts to keep organs alive for transplanting, to brain death, to US and Soviet mind-control experiments with chemicals and implants, to parasites that hijack other animals' brains. Despite the variety, the book doesn't feel cobbled together. The chapters lead into each other and refer back to previous chapters--while they could be reworked to stand alone, they don't feel like a collection of individual pieces brought together for the heck of it.
Why only three stars? Because I am a fiction/narrative lover at heart. The information does flow well, but the overarching narrative--the effort to build a zombie--is so infrequently present that it starts to feel a bit forced when it does show up. While we learn the theory of building a zombie, the author never quite manages to pull it all together, to talk about the practical aspects of the impending zombie apocalypse. A concluding chapter combining some of the earlier discussions might have helped. But then, that might have ended up looking even more forced than the random hints in the middle of a naturally progressing discussion.
Fun book, would recommend for the content! Just be ready to be a bit of a hypochondriac toward the end...
I even had one conversation to that effect, when a guy struck up a conversation asking about my plans. Naturally, I will not reveal them to anyone but my evil henchcat. The chief delight of the conversation was getting to shut down his attempted mansplanining by countering with details of Haitian zombie beliefs--because I'm the one reading the book, dang it, so don't you try to tell me that like it's news.
Anyway, this was a very fun book to read. It was wide-ranging, from actual zombie culture, to efforts to keep organs alive for transplanting, to brain death, to US and Soviet mind-control experiments with chemicals and implants, to parasites that hijack other animals' brains. Despite the variety, the book doesn't feel cobbled together. The chapters lead into each other and refer back to previous chapters--while they could be reworked to stand alone, they don't feel like a collection of individual pieces brought together for the heck of it.
Why only three stars? Because I am a fiction/narrative lover at heart. The information does flow well, but the overarching narrative--the effort to build a zombie--is so infrequently present that it starts to feel a bit forced when it does show up. While we learn the theory of building a zombie, the author never quite manages to pull it all together, to talk about the practical aspects of the impending zombie apocalypse. A concluding chapter combining some of the earlier discussions might have helped. But then, that might have ended up looking even more forced than the random hints in the middle of a naturally progressing discussion.
Fun book, would recommend for the content! Just be ready to be a bit of a hypochondriac toward the end...