{"id":680,"date":"2014-07-28T01:20:38","date_gmt":"2014-07-28T01:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/?p=680"},"modified":"2014-06-30T01:23:21","modified_gmt":"2014-06-30T01:23:21","slug":"review-zom-b-by-darren-shan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/?p=680","title":{"rendered":"Review: Zom-B by Darren Shan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\"><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/zombshan.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-681\" alt=\"zombshan\" src=\"http:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/zombshan.jpg\" width=\"128\" height=\"187\" \/><\/a>Zom-B<\/i>\u00a0is the first title in a new series of the same name, by teen horror master Darren Shan. B is a teen in England, with a troubled life, with an abusive, racist father.\u00a0 When a small town in Ireland is decimated by zombies, B\u2019s father dismisses the reported attacks as a ploy by the media.\u00a0\u00a0 Soon B discovers that that zombie attack in Ireland was not an isolated incident, and that B\u2019s world is about to change for the worse. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">It is fascinating to see the specter of racism brought forward in a zombie book.\u00a0 Daniel Waters\u2019\u00a0<i>Generation Dead<\/i>\u00a0series approaches it with the racism of the living against the relatively innocent reanimated.\u00a0 In\u00a0<i>Zom-B<\/i>\u00a0the zombies are ruthless killing machines looking to devour the living; it is the naked racism of B\u2019s father against immigrants, the Irish, and anyone who has a different skin color that is made real, and that impacts B and how B reacts to people.\u00a0 It should be noted that B is not presented as an angel, committing minor crimes here and there, struggling internally with racism that permeated B\u2019s household. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Shan doesn\u2019t hold anything back in describing the bloody and gory zombie attacks.\u00a0\u00a0<i>Zom-B<\/i>\u00a0is a testament to Shan\u2019s remarkable skill as a writer, as he challenges the reader\u2019s preconceptions of everything, including B. \u00a0While providing necessary back story, Shan keeps the pace up, and then the action explodes at the end.Highly recommended for middle and high school libraries and YA collections. Future books in the series is\u00a0<i>Zom-B Underground<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>Zom-B: City\u00a0<\/i>to be released in 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Contains: Gore, violence, racism<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zom-B\u00a0is the first title in a new series of the same name, by teen horror master Darren Shan. B is a teen in England, with a troubled life, with an abusive, racist father.\u00a0 When a small town in Ireland is decimated by zombies, B\u2019s father dismisses the reported attacks as a ploy by the media.\u00a0\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,20,82],"tags":[103],"class_list":["post-680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-ya-books","category-zombies","tag-darren-shan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Eu9f-aY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=680"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":683,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions\/683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}