My Two Cents: WHERE THE TIDE LEAVES ITS DEAD by Bray Mattheson

I've had zombies on the brain lately, having written a short story to submit for KJK Publishing's new Zombies anthology that just released this week. At the same time, I was also reading "Where The Tide Leaves Its Dead" by Bray Mattheson which, coincidentally, also revolves around zombies.

"Where The Tide Leaves Its Dead" is a mix of dark humor, horror, and survivalism, set against the tropical backdrop of a south Pacific island in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. Not just any zombie apocalypse, however. The undead in this story come out of the sea, armed, aggressive, and relentless in their pursuit of the living, including the beleaguered hero Casey Jones. Casey is a transplant from Texas who now earns a dangerous living dispatching "sea corpses" and hacking off their lower jaws--or "jowls," used as currency--to cash in for supplies. As the story opens, his only companion is Puaka, his loyal "hell pig," that fights alongside him, but he quickly amasses new friends as he treks across the island in search of a fabled "war club," a last vestige of human survivors who are said to share strength in numbers against the undead. Through a series of harrowing misadventures, Casey soon learns that not all of his new allies are trustworthy, and the salvation in the "war club" may not be as promising as it first appears.

This is a wildly imaginative story with breakneck pacing and a colorful cast of characters. The exotic setting serves as a stark contrast to the bleak circumstances in which the island's ragtag human populace is forced to survive. The sea corpses, and in particular, their malevolent leader, Vaekoro, are menacing and terrifying, and the abuses Casey endures leading up to his final confrontation with Vaekoro are truly brutal. "Where The Tide Leaves Its Dead" reads like a movie adaptation, and it's easy to imagine this playing out on the big screen as you're reading. It's a great debut novel and a hell of a lot of fun, making Mattheson an author I'll be keeping an eye on for sure.

"Where The Tide Leaves Its Dead" is available here.