Soulless by Christopher Golden

Target Audience: Adults
Genre: Horror/Zombies

It's taken me a while to write this because i've been so busy with work and various other things.

It goes to show that it made such an impact on me that i can still make a very clear and precise recollection on which to write my review.

Soulless is at a basic level, a zombie novel but there's a lot more to it than the generic dead creatures feeding off the flesh of the living, and for once there's a reason for it (instead of, oh yeh, i'm a zombie, i should therefore eat people)

In Soulless the dead are a result of a seance gone wrong (or so the main characters suspect) and they all start clambering out of their graves and trying to find their loved ones, attacking and feeding on anyone in their path.

There were two major things that made this novel stand out among all other zombie novels, and the first was the timeline. The amount of destruction and death that occurs is quite overwhelming, even more so when you realise that all this occurs in a day. Not a week, not a month and no where near a year. To me this made the disaster even more profound because anything that can change humanity and our way of living in less than 24 hours is a truly tragic event.
 
Secondly, the actual zombies themselves were different, some of which were so intelligent it was heartbreaking to witness them destroyed, and must have been even harder for the characters themselves.

One of the most profound scenes in the novel was the part with Sara and her dad because one of the most frightening aspects was that without souls, all thats left of the dead are memories and thoughts, any warm humanity is gone. As a result, some of the dead characters say some truly hauntingly awful things to people they cared about while alive.

With regards to the characters i found myself truly amazed by there capabilities, and equally horrified in some cases. And i found it fascinating to see how different people responded to the tragedy. Some of the so called weaker people seemed to cope better than the stronger ones. And some just lost it altogether and were all for doing anything (including murder) to stop the end, even without knowing the true cause.


In conclusion, this is a trully horrifying and breathtaking addition to the zombie genre that will have you thiking about it for ages after you finish reading it.  The ending is truly amazing and i never saw it ending the way it did. The main issue for me though, when all was said and done, was what does it mean to be human? because after seeing how some people behave in the face of tragedy, i think human is a descriptive word thrown around all to easily.