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The Plumbers by Terry M. West ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )
Pleasant Storm Entertainment, 2020
ISBN: 9781916084520
Available: Paperback (October 2020), Kindle edition (available now)
Once again, it’s ANOTHER story with zombies as the main monsters! Thankfully, Terry M. West’s The Plumbers takes the road less traveled; this isn’t another story with the world fully decimated and a small group of plucky survivors trying to survive a zombie apocalypse. West’s approach is more reminiscent of George A. Romero’s take on walking corpses in the film Land of the Dead. It’s a fun, 110 page novella, perfect for a couple of hours of escapism.
The story concerns Liam and Pierce, two “average Joe” plumbers. The undead (called ‘plauguers’) are scattered throughout the country, and people survive in three different zones based on risk of zombie attack: green, orange, and red. The whole book is just one day in the life of these two wrench jockeys, as they deal with traffic jams, irritable customers, blown water service connections, trying to order pizza, and undead mayhem, among other things. It’s a quick snapshot of what life might be like for those that survive and try to carry on as normal in an abnormal world.
The story is a nice blend of action and character development, although it does lean a bit heavy towards the conversation between the characters. That’s as close as there is to a flaw in the story. A bit more actual plumbing would have brushed up the characters a bit, there isn’t a whole lot of pipework. When action does happen, it’s entertaining enough, whether it’s Pierce bashing zombies in the head with his favorite hammer (dubbed ‘Uncle Fran’) or tossing pipe bombs out the vehicle window to decimate the hoards pursuing them. The climax of the story is solid enough: it’s not edge of your seat excitement, but it’s enough to keep the reader turning pages. There are moments of occasional wry humor, usually provided by Pierce. He’s probably the only person who can be trapped in a room with zombies outside the door, and calmly read a book and fall asleep. There’s not much in the way of backstory for the cause of the zombies, and in a short story like this, it isn’t needed. It’s enjoyable to read a narrative that doesn’t bother trying to explain everything, but just tells what is happening at the current time, with any further explanation is happily tossed off to the side. The gore in this story is kept fairly minimal, although there’s the occasional person torn apart or body part amputated. This is one zombie story that concentrates on driving a simple theme along instead of splashing figurative blood all over the pages, a la Jack Ketchum.
The Plumbers is a nice, slightly different from the average, story to breeze through for a quick zombie fix. Considering that novellas usually only cost around $10 for an actual paperback, it’s worth the minimal investment for an evening of entertainment.
Contains: violence, gore, profanity
Reviewed by Murray Samuelson
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