Book Review: Monster Planet by David Wellington

I was eager to see how the series ended after reading Monster Nation, and stuck straight into Monster Planet, however I was punished for my greediness. I found this book disappointing, irritating and quite dull. Wellington seems to have fallen in love with his own new breed of zombies, which I soon grew tired of as they are all the same and are not as interesting, or scary, as the shambling undead. I also found it hard to have any sympathy or empathy for the characters. Not one of them objected to being zombified and the general impression I got from the series that it is better to be undead than dead, as at least you can still walk around. I can't imagine anything more horrible than being trapped in your body and watching it decay and it would have been nice to see at least ONE character think that way. Also, despite indications in the first book of a spiritual nature, and other occurrances suggesting a spiritual world, Wellington has either changed his mind or chickened out and abolished an after life in his fictional creation. All the characters, without exception, seem to feel it is better to stay death with becoming a zombie rather than enter a void. I find it hard to believe that people who have fought zombies for over a decade, facing death every day, would be so afraid of dying they would rather be an undead corpse. Real life shows that people who are in contact with death all the time are more willing to die when it comes to it and I think the normal human response would be revulsion at the thought of being a zombie. I also found the end of this book very bad. A disappointing final for a series I enjoyed in the first two installments. I can't help but feel this book has soured the other two for me. I want to give it a 2/10 but out of fairness for what has gone before I give it 5/10.