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Return of the Living Dead

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About this listen

Return of the living dead...

A decade after the first zombie outbreak, a bus crashes in a small American town, killing everyone on board. Local churchgoers rush to the scene to save the living and destroy the dead. But they're too late. A terrifying new plague of living dead has been unleashed. A new horde of victims has been infected. And this time, they are ravenous.

In 1968, the classic Night of the Living Dead changed the face of horror. The film was based on the screenplay by George A. Romero and John Russo. The original novel written by John Russo was followed by Return of the Living Dead in 1978, a very different sequel than 1985 film directed by Dan O'Bannon.

©2012 John Russo (P)2021 Capricorn Literary Horror Scary
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I thoroughly enjoyed the story. It was a pretty good continuation of Night Of The Living Dead. It moved at a fast pace and the narrator did a good job with regards to the atmosphere and characters. The only gripes I have are that on teo occasions the audio skipped a second or two and I wish the book had been a few hours longer (purely because I love zombie stories!)

Enjoyable Follow Up To The Classic 'Night'

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Great story, only niggle was the voice jumps occasionally while listening, like a skipped record.

Almost perfect.

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A weak attempt at a sequel to Night of the Living Dead.

As some readers may or may not know, this book was originally a script written by Russo - a script nobody wanted. Return of the Living Dead was later bought by Tom Fox and rewritten by Dan O’Bannon who was also the writer of Alien.

There is a reason why this was never picked up, and why Romero insisted on making Dawn of the Dead instead. It is a weak story with a simplistic two dimensional plot. The character arc is probably one of the weakest I have read to date. It was difficultvatcbest to relate to the characters and the story was completely devoid of surprises. Next to no time is spent on the outbreak itself meaning that you as a reader get a very poor sense of the scope of the outbreak.

Russo was never a good writer and this is no exception to that notion. He copied a lot of this seen elsewhere and also reused several concepts from the NOTLD script.

I am a die hard zombie fan and I happily read and watch what is out there. But this? Sorry, save your money. It is a frustrating slow paced read with little to no substance.

It’s only saving grace is that the narrator does a pretty good job.

As has been talked about before. Who was really the brain behind the original film? Easy. It’s Romero and this leaves no doubt if you ever had any.

In short. Not worth your time.

Thin and poorly written.

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