by Renee P. (link)
Genre horror, thriller
Pairings Isaac/Nikki, Taylor/Natalie, Zac/Kate, Zac/OFC
Length: 10 chapters
Status Completed
Anyone who knows me will know that I am all for a story that steps outside the rom com mold that’s so common in hanfic. When I saw that Music of the Dead featured zombies, it shot way up my ‘to read’ list.
The story starts off on a pretty gross note — a fan in the process of turning into a zombie (although no one knows it yet) gets violently ill while chatting with Kate. I’ll spare you the details; the story only gets more and more gory from there. I like the way that Renee wove religion into the story, even though I’m not a religious person. Each Hanson boy has a slightly different role to play in the zombie apocalypse — Taylor has religion, Isaac is the comic book nerd and Zac is into science. All they’re missing is ammunition, which they find in the form of a somewhat stereotypical Kentucky girl.
The characters here are all a bit stereotypical, and Renee takes some serious liberties with both Natalie and Kate’s characterizations. It’s difficult to read about characters who are so different from reality as we know it, and I wish this story were just a bit longer so that I could adjust to those differences. In fact, I wish it were longer in general; there’s a lot of worldbuilding here, but I want more.
A pattern I’ve noticed with Renee’s stories is that they are never particularly long. She makes it work, though. This story in particular has a lot packed into its ten chapters. Still, I wouldn’t have minded another ten or even twenty chapters of this zombie drama.
Review by Bethany (website)