An out-of-print collection of zombie short stories from the eighties including such greats as Stephen King, Robert McCammon and Joe Lansdale, Book of the Dead is a welcome addiction to any zombie-readers library of death. Some stories fit the norm while others go far out of their way to be unique, sometimes too far. This collection is so eighties you can almost hear the hair-metal cranking and all the chicks have to be imagined with bangs reaching for the sun.

At first I expected this book to be a bit tame in comparison to some of the newer zombie short stories I've read, just because much of the new stuff is clearly meant to do nothing but shock and disturb. However, I found a couple of the stories here to be nearly as blasphemous and far less politically correct than what I'm used to, and the disturbing rivers run hella-deep.

This book is sought after by the zombiphiles and usually used to make unfavorable comparisons to newer collections. Once again I'm on the other end, I really liked this book and loved several of the stories, but it's not by any means my favorite of it's ilk. That's not so much a judgment on the stories or the collection as a whole, it's just a statement as to where my tastes go, that should be understood.

One of the most entertaining aspects of the work was the stories that were dated, even if only by the attitudes that have changed since. Even the levels of sexism and racism evident in the characters makes you realize how much the world really has changed, at least in the realm of zombie fiction.

Within this tome we have King's classic Home Delivery that will later show up in Nightmares & Dreamscapes, I've always liked how instead of trying to get on an island to survive the zombies, this story is about people who start out on an island. Others I particularly enjoyed were Like Pavlov's Dogs by Stephen R. Boyett and Choices by Glen Vasey. That's not to say there weren't several others I really liked and only a couple I disliked. Overall it's a really good collection, and not one you'll find yourself regretting if you can find a copy at a reasonable price.

8 out of 10 bondage scenarios gone terribly wrong