by
Stephen Kozeniewski
Stephen Kozeniewski
I have only six words to say about the steaming, execrable hunk of titillating, sex-and-violence fueled piece of garbage so unfortunately mistitled THE GHOUL ARCHIPELAGO:
That's your takeaway. Good enough. Walk away now. Oh you want to hear more? How about I make a list of five reasons NOT to buy it.
1. Zombies are SO OVER. There’s nothing original left to be said on the subject. If you’ve read one Walking Dead clone, you’ve read them all. THE GHOUL ARCHIPELAGO doesn’t take readers anywhere new (except a semi-colonial, semi futuristic South Pacific anti-paradise.) It's just the same old urban hellscape of ALL zombie novels. Yawn. Not to mention its characters are just the same old clichés, trotted out for one more retread:
- a sheriff searching for his family (or, in this case, a rakish smuggler captain)
- a one-eyed megalomaniac villain (or, in this case, a twenty-something billionaire inventor)
- a wisecracking pizza delivery boy (or, in this case, a silent red-headed engineer)
- a wise old farmer (or, in this case, a sexy stowaway)
And so forth.
2. Any decent, normal person would be shocked and horrified by the salacious, gratuitous pornography and bloodcurdling, grand guignol violence in this so-called “book.” It features (and I’m not making this up):
- Torture
- Sacrilege
- Human sacrifice
- Cannibalism (original recipe)
- Cannibalism (extra crispy)
- Corpse goo in the eyes
- Strongly implied sodomy
- A puppet made out of a dead teenager
- Masturbation
- Masturbation “paraphernalia”
- Zombie sex
- Zombie barb wire sex
- Zombie foodie porn sex
And, perhaps most damning of all:
- Mildly leftist subtexts
3. This book did NOT win the 2013 Amazon Breakout Novel Award. In fact, it made it no further than the Quarter-Finals. Right off the bat, this book was a LOSER. The fact that legendary horror publishing house Severed Press offered a contract within a week of seeing it does little to assuage its status as an ABNA LOSER.
4. It's a lucky thing this book DID make it as far as it did in the ABNA contest, because otherwise it would not have received a Publisher's Weekly review. That reviewer stated (and I quote,) "This abysmal tale of post-zombie apocalypse life in the South Pacific will try the patience of any reader...elements might have been combined into a decent story, but the prose isn’t up to the task. Readers must suffer through nonsensical phrases...Some passages are just straight-up gross...Many characters come to a sticky end, but most readers will have given up well before the conclusion.”
5. What’s the matter? You didn’t heed the warning from PW about how awful this book is? Okay, how about this actual one-star review from Goodreads? The reviewer states (and, again, I quote,) “…” Well, okay, so the only one-star review is blank. But a reader did think lowly enough of the book to join Goodreads (and then never log in again) for the SOLE PURPOSE of panning this novel with zero words, feeling, perhaps, that the rating was sufficiently self-justifying. That’s the sort of contempt this book inspires in healthy, God-fearing people.
So, there you have it folks. Five simple reasons not to click on the following link and hit “insta-buy:”
After ravenous corpses topple society and
consume most of the world’s population, freighter captain Henk Martigan is
shocked to receive a distress call.
Eighty survivors beg him to whisk them away
to the relative safety of the South Pacific. Martigan wants to help, but to
rescue anyone he must first pass through the nightmare backwater of the Curien
island chain.
 | |||||
| Amazon.com | Amazon.UK |
A power struggle is brewing in the Curiens. On one side,
the billionaire inventor of the mind-control collar seeks to squeeze all the
profit he can out of the apocalypse. Opposing him is the charismatic leader of
a ghoul-worshipping cargo cult. When a lunatic warlord berths an aircraft
carrier off the coast and stakes his own claim on the islands, the stage is set
for a bloody showdown.
To save the remnants of humanity (and himself), Captain
Martigan must defeat all three of his ruthless new foes and brave the gruesome
horrors of...THE GHOUL ARCHIPELAGO.
Stephen Kozeniewski lives with his wife
and two cats in Pennsylvania, the birthplace of the modern zombie. He was born
to the soothing strains of "Boogie With Stu" even though The Who are
far superior to Zep, for reasons that he doesn't even really want to get into
right now.
During his time as a Field Artillery officer, he served
for three years in Oklahoma and one in Iraq, where due to what he assumes was a
clerical error, he was awarded the Bronze Star. The depiction of addiction in
his fiction is strongly informed by the three years he spent working at a
substance abuse clinic, an experience which also ensures that he employs strict
moderation when enjoying the occasional highball of Old Crow.
He is also a classically trained linguist, which sounds
much more impressive than saying his bachelor's degree is in German.
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