write more about the reasoning behind my blog, behind my title, behind different themes and elements that appear here. Instead, I get an email that leaves me open mouthed and awe struck. So, if you’re tired of STAR WARS news, I apologize, but I urge you to read on… Wow. This is something I’ve honestly never expected to see. Before I go into details, just take a close look at the cover of the new STAR WARS: Death Troopers (by Joe Schreiber) novel that was released today. Can you see the blood and chains? Does the decapitated stormtrooper’s head mean anything to you? Nothing? What if I give you a one word prod in the right direction? Zombie.
Yes, friends, you read that correctly. Zombies. Or at least that’s what the blurb reads like to me. You decide.
When the Imperial prison barge Purge–temporary home to five hundred of the galaxy’s most ruthless killers, rebels, scoundrels, and thieves–breaks down in a distant, uninhabited part of space, its only hope appears to lie with a Star Destroyer found drifting, derelict, and seemingly abandoned. But when a boarding party from the Purge is sent to scavenge for parts, only half of them come back–bringing with them a horrific disease so lethal that within hours nearly all aboard the Purge die in ways too hideous to imagine.
And death is only the beginning.
The Purge’s half-dozen survivors–two teenage brothers, a sadistic captain of the guards, a couple of rogue smugglers, and the chief medical officer, the lone woman on board–will do whatever it takes to stay alive. But nothing can prepare them for what lies waiting aboard the Star Destroyer amid its vast creaking emptiness that isn’t really empty at all. For the dead are rising: soulless, unstoppable, and unspeakably hungry.
Sure sounds like zombies to me. And in the STAR WARS universe, too. The author, Joe Schreiber, is a known horror author and this is his first installment into the STAR WARS universe. In the timeline of things, it takes place just before A New Hope, and it is canon.
The review I read indicated that the novel is indeed creepy and spooky at times, and that the story is bleak and hopeless. While this is typical with the zombie genre, it’s (potentially) exciting to see how it fits into the STAR WARS universe. And, since it’s close to Halloween, I could easily fit it into some holiday-themed reading.
I’ll definitely be adding this to my reading pile.
An after-thought: It’s coincidental that two days ago I posted a review for Zombieland and yesterday I posted a review for the last STAR WARS novel I read, and then today I have a post that combines both zombies and STAR WARS. It’s odd that I’ve never heard of this novel until today, too. Tomorrow will continue along with Writing Wednesdays and the story of Hank Tasla.
