Matthew Fryer

A recent addition to Abaddon’s Tomes of the Dead line, I expected this to be a zombie horror-thriller. And while indeed it is, there’s far more to Simon’s novel than necrotic innards and masticated brains.

Britain is being consumed by floods, and as the terrified population attempt to climb away from the creeping waters to safety, it becomes clear that drowning or starvation are the least of their worries. The murky depths are home to an army of green-eyed undead. Control and hope is soon lost, the semi-devoured victims rising from where they fall to replenish the ranks of their slayers.

The story follows the plight of three characters. The first is Katya Wencewska, an educated and tough Polish immigrant whom we meet imprisoned in the Manchester brothel where she is forced to work as a sex slave. The pace begins at a breathless rate, as Katya breaks out of her flooded vice cell to the rooftops to fight off the watery horde.

Robbie McTarn is an ex-soldier, steeped in alcohol and post-traumatic-stress, who finds himself called back into service to embark on a dangerous mission across the bleak, drowned Lancashire countryside. His orders are to find Ben Stiles, a brilliant but damaged scientist who may have some answers regarding the rotting scourge that is consuming the world.

These are no ordinary zombies. I’ve seen genre fiction in which the dead are nothing but a brainless, relentless eating machine. There are also ones that display cunning and intelligence. This, paradoxically, can sometimes make it less scary; you can’t plot or scheme against something that has no capability to learn or any sense of self-preservation. Well, Simon’s undead fall somewhere between the two with a pleasing twist, and the results are fascinating.

The back stories of our protagonists, and the way their lives become entwined, are delivered in snippets with the skill of a practiced writer. The characters themselves are believable, each displaying a realistic voice of experience (the novel is presented as three 1st person accounts) and empathy is never a problem.

Tide of Souls is refreshingly unpredictable, and also quick to resolve threads before they drag on past their welcome; some writers misjudge a reader’s patience with suspense, but here, the timing is always spot on.

This is also an incredibly visual book, packed with images both haunting and loud. To present one example, at the outset of McTarn’s tale, we join a group of military as they watch handheld footage of some soldiers investigating an office block that are beset by the horde. The experience made me feel as though somebody had triggered a strobe-light in my brain, and the memory of this scene is almost as though I’ve actually seen the horrific video myself, bringing similarly unpleasant moments in Aliens and Event Horizon to mind. Excellent stuff.

So any gripes? There’s a military commanding officer who’s a dick, which made me think yeah, yeah, yeah, but as it works so well here, maybe it is the fault of lesser writers for making this a cliché. I also noticed that a lot of the military seem to wear moustaches, which put me in mind of the British airmen in ‘Allo ‘Allo. A childish distraction on my part, yet still one that took me slightly out of the moment.

It did irritate me that it comes as a shock to one character when he discovers that infection is spread via the undead’s bite. As this story is set in our world, one could presume that their entertainment media is just as full of zombie fiction as ours, so wouldn’t they just assume that if you get bitten, you’re screwed? I’ll concede that while this is a tricky one, it’s an issue that I wish more horror writers would address.

But these are the only complaints, and I had to be pedantic to find them. This is a powerful, entertaining novel written in crisp, addictive prose. The first two segments brim with action – brawls upon precarious boats, melees involving some serious military hardware (which are startling in their realism) and an immense bodycount – while the third favours a creepy rather than explosive tone. The scientist’s account takes us to a very different place, offering some degree of explanation, pathos by the barrel, and beautifully ties up this memorable and grisly package.

Based upon Tide of Souls and also Simon’s collection Pictures of the Dark, his name has joined the ranks of those whose future fiction I shall purchase without hesitation.

Simon Bestwick

Abaddon Books