Why you can trust GamesRadar+
Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.
The author of Warm Bodies resisted writing a prequel to his “zombie romance” for quite a while, but clearly commercial imperatives eventually won the day.
Issac Marion argued – quite rightly – that seeing zombie protagonist R’s life before he turned would hold no interest. The New Hunger sidesteps that by kicking off as he wakes as one of the undead. Two other strands follow his future squeeze Julie, and Nora, who’s to become her best friend.
Article continues below
It’s a more conventional tale of the zombie apocalypse, with an emphasis on finding food, weapons and shelter - though Marion’s style remains pleasingly poetic (R’s hunger for flesh is memorably described as extending beyond him like “a cloud of hands”) and epigrammatic (of shooting the dead in the head: “Responsible murder had become the new recycling”). He also continues to show a gift for evocative detail (at one point, we visit a flooded city where “letters float like lily pads”).
Fans will welcome the chance to return to this world, and to see more details sketched out - like a giant wall at the Canadian border, an arson cult called The Fire Church, and suicide pills branded Enditol. But the large font size means this is basically a 90-page novella, and you couldn’t really describe it as essential reading.
Ian Berriman has been working for SFX – the world's leading sci-fi, fantasy and horror magazine – since March 2002. He's also a regular writer for Electronic Sound. Other publications he's contributed to include Total Film, When Saturday Comes, Retro Pop, Horrorville, and What DVD. A life-long Doctor Who fan, he's also a supporter of Hull City, and live-tweets along to BBC Four's Top Of The Pops repeats from his @TOTPFacts account.
