MONSTER ISLAND

From Publishers Weekly
In Wellington's energetic horror debut, the first of a promised trilogy, Manhattan has become Monster Island after a plague has turned all its denizens into shambling, rotting animated corpses, except for a couple who have kept their intelligence and also acquired psychic powers. When an expedition from Africa arrives, composed of teenage girl-soldiers and a former U.N. weapons inspector, the zombie masters mobilize their forces to kill or eat the living humans. Page by page, the story is inventive and exciting as Wellington exploits his familiarity with New York's nooks and crannies as settings for flesh-chomping battles and narrow escapes. As a whole, though, the book satisfies less since the author selectively forgets anything about the situation or the characters that would inhibit further gross-out episodes. Still, the novel offers some provocative thoughts about the purpose of life and death underlaid with some ultra-dark humor. (May) 

From Booklist
This is a zombie novel--a fantastic zombie novel. Most of the world has fallen to the undead, with pockets of survivors clinging to a precarious existence. At the behest of the leader of the Free Women's Republic of Somaliland, a shipload of those makes the ludicrous trip from Africa to New York in a desperate quest for medicine. New York is a wasteland, and everything depends on a small, incredibly dedicated band of teenage girls, armed to the teeth, and native guide Dekalb, formerly a UN arms inspector. Also, in NYC there is Gary, a zombie who, completely unexpectedly, retains live human mental faculties. The questers get ringside seats for some of the apocalypse's finest moments, and no matter how prepared they thought they were, something worse awaits in the depths of New York. When zombies have already overrun everything, that's saying something. There are many layers to this zombie apocalypse, and this book just gets things rolling.