Monster Island

Monster Island was quite a interesting story, although at times it was a struggle to read though. In the beginning the droll tone of the main character talking about his surroundings and accopmyment really didn't set the story off to be the wonder that it was. Monster Island did one very interesting thing that really stands out in the crowd, It told half of the story from the perspective of the undead. It interjected science into the reasoning behind why a zombie is the way it is. Not in the crude sense that most of hollywood trys to make a zombie outbreak more appealing by adding some disease or virus to it, but in a real way explaining how the lack of oxygen would damage the brain cells. Real science that we all know to be true, and when you really start to look at it, makes allot of sense. Maybe all that was making these people into mindless night of the living dead esque corpses was not the virus/voodo/supernatural cause that was thrown at us, but more the side affects of that main trigger. Sure, there might be a virus that reanimates the dead but if there was no down time, there was no time for the brain to start to die would we be facing zombies as smart, as fast and as cunning as us? These are the interesting questions I think monster island subtly brings to the surface.

Another thing that was picked out from some where between the lines, although its almost right there on the surface is the juxtaposition of the military girls against Gary the 'zombie'. The girls were mechanical, robotic, almost dead to the world. They seemed to have no feelings, no thoughts and no free will. They were raised to be a certain way, to listen to there commander no matter what the situation, and thus were stripped from the very thing that makes us human. Our free speech, free will, our will to decide and think. These on the other hand were all things that Gary possessed. He had feelings, he made decisions he was for the most part a very smart individual. Taking what he saw and reaching to it, weather with emotions or instinct, he was reacting. Something we almost never see from the girls in the book. They never react to something. If there told to do something in retaliation, yes there reacting , but there not making the choice, there commander is.

Thus asks the age old question, whos the compassionate, thinking, feeling beauty [read:human, and whos the heartless, unfeeling, cold, beast [read:zombie]