Through interconnected eyewitness accountsemails, text messages, reports, diaries, found video footage, and graphic adaptations, Zombie Apocalypse! Endgame tells the story of the climactic final battle between the ZZ infantry of the New Zombie Order and the fighters of the human resistance. Who will win the endgame?
Dark bleatings, my undead tribe! I’m here to review the third and final instalment in the Zombie Apocalypse anthology trilogy, edited by Stephen Jones, and I’m happy to say that I enjoyed it!
For those not in the know, this series is a bit special because of the stylistic approach that was taken in constructing it. Usually with anthologies, each author’s contribution is quite clearly labelled (in that we get the stories in turn, with the author’s listed along with the titles). Here, the formatting is much more creative in that the book is presented as one whole, rather than several stories written by different authors. The story of the zombie apocalypse is told to us in an epistolary fashion, through news, emails, articles, messages, and more – but in short, we’re not dealing with a “one story after the other” type of setup. (I know which parts Ramsey Campbell wrote though….I know his style like the back of my hand, and also there’s a character called Jenny Ramsey and if that wasn’t Ramsey sneaking his wife into this book, I’ll eat my own face).
Anyway, the anthologies are made up of authors offering contributions to the same overall story, and I can’t believe I’ve only just realised that it has similarities to World War Z (by Max Brooks), in that rather than a solid central character, we’re getting pieces from lots of places to make up the narrative. I like this trilogy a lot more than World War Z, for the record, because I find it much more exciting as horror stories go.
We get more chaos, and more from Thomas Moreby, the a-hole that started this whole thing, which I expected and was happy to see. What I didn’t expect was the use of a sci-fi mechanic (which I won’t spoil), and the introduction of cosmic horror. I thought I knew what these books were, so I was quite pleasantly surprised to be taken off guard like this. It reminded me of reading Stephen King’s Mr Mercedes trilogy, when he suddenly goes rogue and introduces supernatural concepts in the third book.
I’ve read other reviews of this finale, and though I think I did enjoy the first 2 books in this series a bit more, I don’t share the complaints that others seem to have of this one. Zombie fiction is so saturated at this point that I love it when someone brings something totally new or unique to a story like this, and End Game did.
I’d recommend the whole series to zombie fans. If you’d like to check out the book or the editor, I’ve popped some links below for you:
Bleeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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