Books to Die For

Nate Kenyon's SPARROW ROCK

Nate Kenyon's SPARROW ROCK, this week's Book To Die For, is so good that I actually covered it in the mag twice. The first time was back in 2010 when it was released by Leisure Books (and when it made our short list for Fiction Book of the Year) and then again in RM#127, when I included it in a round-up of a must-read post-apocalyptic horror novels. 

 From my review in RM#103:

"The Cold War may be long over, but Nate Kenyon channels those old nuclear anxieties in SPARROW ROCK, then proceeds to up the ante further by bringing biological warfare into play. 

The tale opens with a group of high school friends looking for a secluded place to hang out and smoke some weed. They eventually end up on the island of Sparrow Rock at a freshly finished bomb shelter - built by the grandfather of one of the teens - where they settle in for a night of partying. That is, until the bombs inexplicably start falling.

With mushroom clouds blooming all around them, the teens hastily secure themselves in the shelter. When the radio tunes in only static, it begins to appear as if America, and maybe the world, is descending into nuclear winter. As the days turn to weeks, the teens begin to fear they may be the last people alive on Earth. Then, the walking corpses and mutant insects show up. They comprise the second wave of the attack - infecting and decimating the remaining survivors one by one. The teens' efforts against them are mostly futile and soon they must decide whether to die in the shelter or risk a similar fate by leaving it to search for another pocket of humanity."

As I wrote in that same review, part of what makes SPARROW ROCK so compelling is that it feels fresh, and still does, even five years later. While, at the onset, the nuclear threat seems to be the same one that's been drilled into our heads by countless books and films, all too soon it breaks free of those narrative confines adding its own twists. Both the implementation of the bioweaponry and the undead are starkly different than in most other contemporary post-apocolyptic works. Furthermore, despite the fact that the story is full of (initially) party-seeking teens, they quickly develop into well-rounded characters, especially when the claustrophobia and effects of the bioweaponry begin to eat away at their sanity (and bodies!). 

 SPARROW ROCK is a perfect example of how a writer can take what seems like a bunch of stock ideas and turn them into something original and striking.

 Despite never being reissued, a whole bunch of used copies are available at Amazon.com for mere pennies. (Also worth noting: the online book seller selected it as one of their Best Books of Month back when it was originally released.)