{"id":8062,"date":"2020-12-01T19:36:46","date_gmt":"2020-12-01T23:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=8062"},"modified":"2020-12-01T19:36:46","modified_gmt":"2020-12-01T23:36:46","slug":"book-review-the-plumbers-by-terry-m-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/book-review-the-plumbers-by-terry-m-west\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Plumbers by Terry M. West"},"content":{"rendered":"

A note from the editor: It is now December and Monster Librarian still needs to raise the funds to pay for our hosting fees and postage in 2021. If you like what we\u2019re doing, please take a moment to click on that red \u201cContribute\u201d button in the sidebar to the right, to help us keep going!\u00a0 Even five dollars will get us closer to the $45 we still need to keep going at the most basic level. We have never accepted paid advertising so you can be guaranteed that our reviews are objective. We\u2019ve been reviewing and supporting the horror community for 15 years now, help us make it another year! Thank you! And now our review of The Plumbers\u00a0<\/em>by Terry M. West.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"cover<\/a><\/p>\n

The Plumbers <\/em>by Terry M. West\u00a0 ( Bookshop.org<\/a>\u00a0| Amazon.com\u00a0 )<\/a><\/p>\n

Pleasant Storm Entertainment, 2020<\/p>\n

ISBN: 9781916084520<\/p>\n

Available: Paperback (October 2020), Kindle edition (available now)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Once again, it’s ANOTHER story with zombies as the main monsters!\u00a0 Thankfully, Terry M. West’s The Plumbers <\/em>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.\u00a0 West’s approach is more reminiscent of George A. Romero’s take on walking corpses in the film Land of the Dead<\/em>.\u00a0 It’s a fun, 110 page novella, perfect for a couple of hours of escapism.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The story concerns Liam and Pierce, two “average Joe” plumbers.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The whole book is just one day in the life of\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The story is a nice blend of action and character development, although it does lean a bit heavy towards the conversation between the characters.\u00a0 That’s as close as there is to a flaw in the story.\u00a0 A bit more actual plumbing would have brushed up the characters a bit, there isn’t a whole lot of pipework.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 There are moments of occasional wry humor, usually provided by Pierce.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The gore in this story is kept fairly minimal, although there’s the occasional person torn apart or body part amputated.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Plumbers <\/em>is a nice, slightly different from the average, story to breeze through for a quick zombie fix.\u00a0 Considering that novellas usually only cost around $10 for an actual paperback, it’s worth the minimal investment for an evening of entertainment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contains: violence, gore, profanity<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A note from the editor: It is now December and Monster Librarian still needs to raise the funds to pay for our hosting fees and postage in 2021. If you like what we\u2019re doing, please take a moment to click on that red \u201cContribute\u201d button in the sidebar to the right, to help us keep<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[83,2313,4645,4646,7],"class_list":["post-8062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-horror-fiction","tag-novellas","tag-terry-m-west","tag-the-plumbers","tag-zombies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8062"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8099,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8062\/revisions\/8099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}