Random Book Review!-The Dead Undone by Ellie Douglas

What better way to celebrate Halloween then with zombies and bloodshed!! I recently read Ellie Douglas’s, “The Dead Undone” and my review is listed below. Highly recommend if you like your horror with a side of arterial spray!

Taken from my Amazon review and also posted on Goodreads!–4 out of 5 Stars. 😀

Ellie Douglas’s, “The Dead Undone” will let you know right from the book’s ominous opening that this read will not end well for many characters within its pages. Douglas’s ability to expertly detail horrific scenes like a masterful director will leave horror loving readers gagging and wanting more as you buckle up for a wild ride through sheer terror and gruesome carnage.

In “The Dead Undone” readers are given the opportunity to meet and relate to many of her characters as she details their daily lives nestled within the confines of a tiny island some distance away from the main town. Given enough information to set the stage, readers will no doubt form opinions and choose their favorites such as Willa, a soft-hearted nurse at the island’s insane asylum and Wiremu an elderly man with some seriously strong survival instincts.

The townspeople and their interactions, coupled with Douglas’s ability to make each character completely different and play off each other flawlessly, makes the gore go down easier when the lights go out and the bloodshed reaches the maximum. The attention to detail concerning the island and specific locales, including each floor and the surrounding grounds of the Tui Asylum adds an additional level of creepiness to Douglas’s already gut ripping and spurting blood coated horror tale.

Douglas peppers her macabre approach to storytelling with tender moments of human interaction and the overarching struggle to survive against all odds. These quieter moments flows nicely against the backdrop of severed limbs, innards, and splattering bits which is horror maven Douglas’s claim to fame and why many of her readers enjoy testing their gag reflexes with every page. The horror is finely detailed and, at times, is almost too perfectly defined as every tooth gnash, head bash, and skin rip is not only explained in graphic detail but done in a way that pushes the envelope on more common and simpler zombie books and movies and how the undead horde is handled.

The setting is beautifully described and, as each chapter focuses on another section of the island until they slowly but surely combine, readers will feel the dread, the fear, and the inescapable creeping in with every page as the undead began their hungering assault. Though Douglas doesn’t break new ground on the zombie genre, it’s her attention to horror scenes, the dark setting, and the interaction of the world around and with her created characters that will leave readers fully engrossed in her work, some may even need to leave a few lights on after the final pages glide past their shaking fingers. Something tells me Douglas wouldn’t have it any other way, and after reading “The Dead Undone”, I’d almost guarantee it.