April
26
Bestial by William D. Carl
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Click to Buy Trade Paperback: 9781934861042, $19.95
- Bestial is a Permuted Press title which means zombie apocalypse–or not. Bestial begins with a bank robbery in Cincinnati which goes terribly wrong when the people on the street and a few of the people in the bank suddenly turn into horrible monsters.
- Present is a disease outbreak that turns most of the city into flesh-craving, near-mindless dangers, and a plucky bunch of mismatched almost-heroes who must battle through the ruins of a city, maybe find a cure and (hopefully) find salvation in the military blockade set up to quarantine the city. But this nasty end-of-Ohio tale spawns ravenous bands of pseudo-werewolves, the results of man’s screwing around with nature.
- Carl writes with both devotion to the end of the world outbreak tale and a mastery of it that allows for tongue-in-cheek word and character play with familiar (very familiar to citizens of Southern Ohio and Northeastern Kentucky) themes. There’s something that’s pure fun about watching an area you know fall to the zombie werewolf apocalypse, but even non residents can enjoy this one with some truly clever writing. Lines like: “Then there were the bodies. They were scattered, dotting the landscape like punctuation, commas of ruined flesh.” make Bestial a surprisingly well written romp through the Apocalypse.