Flesh and Leftovers – Rick Pipito – book review

Flesh and Leftovers – Rick Pipito

For someone that likes short stories, this is a novel styled just for me. What we have is an anthology of short stories; nine different stories about America’s favorite horror subject – Zombies. The stories span the gamut of zombie folklore, culture and legend; from Voodoo zombies to viral outbreak to alien parasites. They are all tied together by a wrap-around, tenth story, about ex-Navy Seal, Gordon Lightcap, who, through these stories is recruiting survivors to fight the supernatural foe.

Each individual story is titled by a case file; incident number. Incident One, starts the book off nicely as two storeowners from a small town in PA, suddenly discover something very wrong has happened to the townsfolk who are wandering in from Main Street. They team up with a gun toting old woman and make their desperate escape from town. Incident Two is probably my favorite as we follow a man who has been infected and is slowly turning into a zombie. He is still aware of himself but unable to control his new zombie urges as he does some terrible things to unsuspecting neighbors. I will also mention the incident that describes the four horsemen of the apocalypse leading legions of zombies to the four corners of the earth, in order to bring about the end of times. This story reads more like a military mission as we follow the bombings and battles against these adversaries.

In the end, we are treated to a highly imaginative, Biblical origin of zombies and zombie ancestors (which were not actually zombies but more like vampires). This all sets up the scene for the next book in which Flesh and Leftovers is part one in a trilogy.

Flesh and Leftovers is a fast-paced and entertaining read. It does contain some of the pitfalls of self-publishing; a bit heavy on exposition, some run-on sentences and perhaps some missing comma’s, but none of that detracts from the stories, themselves. I enjoyed the book’s examination of all different kinds of zombies and think it would be an asset to any zombie fan’s reading list.

www.rickpipito.com