Even before you read the afterword that explains what a bleak place author T. Joseph Browder was in when he wrote Plague, the stark and brutal atmosphere of the story is evident from the get-go. This is a story that opens with a man butchering his wife with an axe as his children look on in horror, and it doesn't let up from there. In some ways, Plague is a zombie novel; yes, nominally, it's a story about a rabies epidemic in which this iteration of the disease is far more horrific, but there's no missing the zombie parallels. But this isn't a story about the walking dead; it's the story of a man who's forced to ask himself how far he would go to protect his family and how he can live with the choices he has to make. In the wrong hands, Plague could feel like a subpar Walking Dead knockoff, substituting shocking violence for emotional depth. But thanks to Browder's strong, rapid-fire writing, Plague works as a devastating, brutal horror story, one that keeps ratcheting up the stakes and the horrors while never losing track of the effects and impact of all of it on our narrator, all the way to the inevitable but still haunting ending. To some degree, Plague feels like something you may have seen before, and it lacks a little bit of the wonderfully odd originality of his masterful collection Dark Matters. But even so, there's no missing the heartfelt pain and anguish at the core of Plague, nor is it hard to miss how personal of a story this is for Browder - a fact made clear in the afterword. Plague isn't for the faint of heart, but for horror fans, it's a stark, brutal read that takes the zombie genre and reminds you just how effective of a genre it can be.
- Josh Mauthe
- Josh Mauthe
