My Arizona book for January is one that I've read before, having picked it up from the author way back in 2012 at Phoenix Comicon-that-was, meaning that I wasn't writing for the Nameless Zine at that point and so didn't review it. It's the first half of a duology, telling a complete story but with a serious escalation arriving at the end to set up the other half of 'The Great Undead War'. And that book I'd never found, until Joe Nassise kindly sold me a copy at CoKoCon when he stepped in as our Author Guest of Honor after Steven Barnes got pinched by the Worldcon.
Nassise writes in many genres and frequently blurs the lines between them. I've already reviewed his Jeremiah Hunt trilogy for the Nameless Zine, which is ostensibly urban fantasy but veers into mystery and horror, and this is just as much of a genre mashup. It's good old-fashioned pulp fiction, a war story at heart; infused with horror, steampunk and a grounding in alternate history. It's a rip-roaring adventure that doesn't have a dull moment, so the three hundred and forty pages zip on past at a rate of knots. It was hard not to leap from this to the sequel, but I'll make that wait until next month.
There are initially two stories that gradually come together to form one larger one. Both unfold in the seventh year of World War I, elongated from our timeline because the Germans have invented corpse gas. What that means is that, after the Allies kill one of the enemy, removing him from the war effort, corpse gas resurrects him into what the enemy call Tottensoldat and we call shamblers. You know: zombies. And they serve as literal cannon fodder, continuing their attacks over and over, resurrected by corpse gas after every death until the Allies manage a head shot and then burn the body. Only then is that soldier truly out of the war.
The first story revolves around Capt. Michael 'Madman' Burke, fighting on the Western front with the American Expeditionary Force alongside his trusty Staff Sergeant Charlie Moore. Michael is a veteran of this war, long enough that he now sports a clockwork arm. He's a traditional hero, very much like the characters who had so many violent adventures in classic war comics. He always does what must be done, even if it covers him in "blood, gore and the stench of rotting flesh" and, while war is hell, "to his secret shame Burke felt his heart cheer at the sight of it all."
The second story follows Maj. Julius 'Jack' Freeman, an air ace in the 94th Aero Squadron, who's an overt fictional replacement for Roy Brown, the Canadian flyer who famously shot down Manfred von Richthofen. Here, it's Freeman who tangles with the Red Baron, a rivalry that doesn't reach its end when his plane, the Jack of Spades prominently painted under his wings, collides with the just as famous red triplane, downing both of them. That's because both of them survive, Freeman by a stroke of luck because he's a regular human being easily killed and von Richthofen because he isn't. He's Tottensoldat, but a special breed that was resurrected with increased intelligence. Suddenly, we're in zombie superhero territory!
The two stories merge because the Allies can't allow Freeman, downed behind enemy lines, to be captured. There are reports that the Germans have been experimenting with the occult and have figured out a way to supernaturally murder someone from a serious distance, such as a continent away, if they happen to have a sample of blood from a very close relative. And Freeman isn't only an air ace. He's the son of the President of the United States. Therefore a mission to retrieve him is imperative and who better to lead that mission than his half-brother, Michael Burke?
As you can imagine from all this, there's a lot going on and much of it needs the reader to shelve their disbelief at the wilder aspects of this framework. But hey, this is pulp fiction and it knows it. Nassise plays it all straight, as ridiculous as some of that setup is, and allows this rescue mission to unfold just like it was an Alistair Maclean or Clive Cussler adventure novel. Just with zombies. And steampunk. Andsure why notwith Nikola Tesla acting as Q in the Bond stories and fitting them out with the latest in gloriously cool gadgetry like electric guns that only take down dead flesh or personal flying machines that allow soldiers to act like flying squirrels. I'm on board. You're not? What's wrong with you?
If that all suggests that this is a pulp steampunk war novel, akin to Cherie Priest's 'Boneshaker' or 'Dreadnought', merely set in a different war, I should remind that there's a serious horror aspect to this book too that goes far beyond mere zombies. I won't spoil the action, but I will say that we end up at a German prison camp, Stalag 113, where those in charge are cannibals who periodically eat their prisoners. And they have an infamous punishment known as the Pit, which is truly brutal, not only because of what moves down there but because the only escape is to attempt to climb up stacks of corpses, hoping that they don't collapse under you, burying you under bodies.
So there's war, which we remain immersed in throughout, with an agreeable level of detail. I felt there was enough to make the novel seem well-researched and, from that aspect, believable, but not so much as to interrupt the action. There's adventure, because this is pulp entertainment and that detail will never get in front of action and mayhem. There's horror, which may go beyond the tolerance levels of an average adventure fan. There's steampunk, in clockwork arms, a tunnelling device, a dirigible and whatever Tesla has to share. And, while it's not as overt, there's superhero stuff here too. It's easy to see von Richthofen as a supervillain and his adjutant, Leutnant Adler, is a product of Dr. Eisenberg's supersoldier program in Verdun. And, if that's all too lowbrow for you, I should add that there's a neat twist that only fans of Greek mythology will see coming.
The downsides here are all tied to the need for suspension of disbelief. I don't know if Nassise ever slipped up and used the wrong uniform or a non-viable bore of gun or some such, because nobody cares about details in a book where the undead Red Baron is trying to capture the President's son during a zombie-filled war so he can use his blood in an occult ritual. What we care about is how it all moves along and I have to say that it moves along like a steam train, not least because there's one of those in here too. It doesn't skimp on the page count but those pages turn quickly and you will find yourself turning the last one after only a session or two. When I finished, the bath water was cold and I didn't care.
Next month, the second half, 'On Her Majesty's Behalf'. ~~ Hal C F Astell
For more titles by Joseph Nassise click here
|
|