Monster Planet

"After the first death, there is no other"—or so wrote poet Dylan Thomas. But David Wellington continues to prove him wrong. Set some 12 years after the apocalyptic events detailed in Monster Island and Monster Nation, Monster Planet brings Wellington's zombie trilogy to a satisfying conclusion while leaving the door open for possible sequels. Monster Galaxy, anyone?

Both Monster Island and Monster Nation featured zombies who, before death could claim them, either accidentally or deliberately maintained the flow of oxygen to their brains; these smart zombies not only retained their intellects but gained, in addition to an insatiable craving for living flesh (or, more accurately, the life force investing it), mysterious powers of a seemingly magical nature—powers reminiscent of mutant super abilities and D&D character-class spells. Nilla, for example, the heroine of Monster Nation, was able to become invisible, while Gary, from Monster Island, could telepathically control vast numbers of zombies. In Monster Planet, these super zombies, dubbed "liches," are present in far greater numbers, most of them working for, and created by, a Russian liche supreme known as the Tsarevich, who is on a mission to ... well, that would be telling.

Arrayed against the Tsarevich are fighters led by Ayaan, a supporting character from book one who has grown into a fierce zombie killer. Ayaan has carved out a zombie-free zone along the African coast, where the last embattled remnants of the human race battle for survival. Among them is 20-year-old Sarah, daughter of Dekalb, the former U.N. weapons inspector whom we last saw, at the end of book one, preparing for zombification thanks to the bite of a ghoul named Jack. When Ayaan is abducted by the Tsarevich's soldiers, Sarah goes after her ... either to rescue her or, if too late for that, to administer the shot to the head that will end her existence as a zombie. Assisting her for reasons of his own is Ptolemy, an Egyptian mummy raised by the same plague that has turned the world into Zombie Central. We've seen these mummy-zombies before, both the Egyptian variety and a Gaelic bog mummy named Mael Mag Och, who possesses formidable powers of his own, as well as the belief that he's been returned to "life" in order to scour the planet free of humanity.

Ayaan's trail leads Sarah across the Atlantic to the United States, or what's left of it, where she will encounter the remnants of her own shattered past and whatever hope there may be for a livable future.

A flat-out sprint to the finish line

One of the distractions of Monster Nation was Wellington's attempt to explain the cause of the zombie plague, as well as the powers of the liches, in pseudo-scientific terms. He's pretty much given that up here. Explanations are kept to a minimum, and the action is pumped up to the max, which makes for a fast, fun, gripping read. With various plot threads deftly woven together, and the return of characters from books one and two, including Gary, Nilla and Mael Mag Och, Monster Planet is better, meatier and, yes, bloodier than its predecessor, if not quite up to the level of Monster Island.

Sarah continues Wellington's string of winning protagonists. Robbed of her father and of her childhood by the plague, Sarah has grown into a haunted young woman whose actions and emotions are filtered through a grim calculus of survival and death. Yet despite living in a world of monsters, she hasn't become one. Equally compelling is Ayaan, who becomes adopted as a kind of pet by some of the Tsarevich's liches and is forced to witness, and participate in, all sorts of gruesome horrors.

The Tsarevich is an intriguing character, a liche who has won living humans over to his side by promising them a new world in which zombies and humans will work together to build a sustainable future. It's a grotesque but nevertheless tempting vision, considering the alternative proposed by Mael Mag Och, or even the status quo. Whether the Tsarevich is evil is a difficult question, one of many that Sarah will have to wrestle with before the end of the novel.

It's this moral ambiguity that makes Monster Planet interesting; this quality was present in the earlier books but less, if you'll forgive me, fleshed out. The collision of the Tsarevich's plans for the future with Mael Mag Och's destructive monomania, rooted in the Neolithic past, and Sarah's brave but naive dreams of rescue or revenge is messy yet powerful, bringing Wellington's trilogy to a fitting end.