At 7 chapters, “Be still my formerly beating heart” is the beginning of an interesting zombie story.  The action starts right from the first line.  The tone is tense and gruesome as a group of humans tries to escape the zombie hordes and get to safety.  Meanwhile, one of the zombies realizes his passion for eating a specific part of the human body and embarks on a quest to educate his fellow zombies.

The story starts with a small group of desperate humans trying to escape from the bank where they are trapped by a ravaging pack of zombies.  The security guard is dead, the bank manager is panic-stricken, one of the tellers is in shock, and the other is watching a few, brave men trying to fight off the hordes.  Lisa, the second teller, becomes the center of this group of survivors.  She’s smart, she’s calm, and she’s seen lots of zombie movies so she’s the only one who knows what to do.  The other main character is the zombie gourmet, who gives a unique perspective on the enemy. 

There’s a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek to the whole story, although there is also a lot of gore and consumption of body parts.  It’s not quite “Shaun of the Dead” funny but it is fun in a gory kind of way.  The action is well-written and the pace of the story is good. The characters are starting to develop nicely and become interesting as we gradually get their histories.  There isn’t much backstory on where the zombies came from but that doesn’t really detract from the fun.  There’s also a fair amount of tension built up as we wait to see who will get eaten next.  However, it’s probably best to read this at night, in a dark room, with the appropriate music playing. 

For anyone who doesn’t already know about zombies, the author has a helpful link at the end of the first chapter, called “the basic rules”.  It tells you everything you need to know about zombies.  Links appear at the bottom of most chapters, leading to pages with other interesting facts and extra information.  There’s also a link at the top of each page giving a fun recap of the story so far. 

I did have a small problem with the formatting of the story, starting with the 5th chapter.  In the 4th chapter, the author switches perspectives from Lisa and the humans to one of the zombies.  In the 5th and remaining chapters, the perspective switches back and forth without any warning.  I knew which perspective it was from the name used, but I would have preferred some kind of notation indicating the switch; a few extra spaces, or some dots would have been helpful. 

All in all, “Be still my formerly beating heart” is a fun, light-hearted zombie story with a twist.  The characters are solid, the pace is good, and there’s lots of gore, action and bravery.  If you like zombie movies, or are curious about the genre, you’ll probably get a kick out of reading this.

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First, a note of admission to my particular personal biases. I tend to be instinctually attracted to Zombie stories in much the same way that the Zombies themselves are instincively attracted to living flesh. There’s just something really appealing about the world falling under rotting arms and gnashing teeth. Possibly "appealing" is not the perfect word.

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Well, I have to start out by saying that this one is a bit . . . violent. Even for a zombie story, so that’s saying something. It’s not the amount of violence, but the sheer depth of detail.

So, don’t read if you’re a bit squeamish.

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