Snag Raising Stony Mayhall Developed By Daryl Gregory Accessible In Publication

que nos cuenta la vida de Stony Mayhall durante cuatro períodos de su vida: como hijo, como camarada, como prisionero y como referente.


Gregory nos presenta unos Estados Unidos postapocalípticos que acaban de sobrevivir a una primera epidemia zombi y a la familia Mayhall que encuentra un bebé en la cuneta en los brazos muertos de su madre.


Una historia entretenida, con grandes dosis de humanidad, narrada sin muchas descripciones y bastante ágil que nos presenta a un protagonista muy completo y que demuestra a la perfección el significado de ser humano pese a ser un zombi aunque diferente de los demás.


He disfrutado mucho de las aventuras y desventuras de Stony pero he echado en falta alguna respuesta más al finalizar la novela.
Occasionally a novel comes along that totally changes the way you view things and your perceptions of what 'should be'.
This book was so touching and different, It was one of those books that the further I got, the slower I read, Not because I was bored or uninterested, . . no. It was because I was afraid of what was coming, . the unknown and didn't want to say goodbye to Stony and try to find something equally as precious, There are several great reviews here, . . all I'll leave you with is, read it.

Highly recommended reading for the Living Dead fan or person who's not so much of a fan,

PS: And if you read and enjoy the flavor of this book, . . check out 'Handling the Undead', Gregorys take on zombies in sitelinkRaising Stony Mayhall is both unusual and ambitious, blending an alternate history, a Living Dead divided by ideology and politics, and musings of the existential variety.


It is an intelligent book that has a lot to say, occasionally taking a philosophical turn as Stony wrestles with the paradox of his existence and the events his life has set in motion.
The first part, detailing Stonys early family life, is strong and richly observed, The characters are written with obvious care, particularly Stony, who is very endearing as the boy who is not a living boy.


However, beyond this point, I began to feel as if I was reading another book entirely, The shifts in time and tone created distance between myself and the story that I found difficult to bridge, and I felt less involved with Stony on an emotional level.
The plot is detailed, and the LD world Gregory has built is interesting and much more complex than a simple mass fever for brains type scenario.
Unfortunately, I found large portions of the story quite disengaging to read, given the slowing pace and the vast amounts of information incorporated into the narrative.


While I appreciate some of the deeper themes and discussion throughout the story, and I enjoyed the climactic scenes, I felt it was let down by a rather predictable ending.
By this point, Ill also admit that my investment in the story was quite low, so the impact felt a little hollow for me.


If youre looking for a different take on the living dead with some thought provoking ideas about life, family, guilt and redemption, this may be for you.


Unfortunately, it just wasnt really for me,
The blurb of this book is what first drew me in promising a new take on zombies, Not one where they are mindless feeding machines, but one where they are able to think and speak and control their impulses.


The zombies in this book, after being turned, go through ahour fever where they are the mindless feeding machines, but after the fever breaks they turn into the "Living Dead" or LD.
Their bite is still deadly, and they are hard to kill but they can function almost normally, If you consider occasionally losing a body part normal,

The book did not flow, It was broken up into parts, each one a different time in Stony's life his growing up, on the run with other undead, in prison, and after prison.
With each section comes a jump in time, that kept me from fully investing in the story, It was like a skipping CD that when you started to get into it, you found yourself somewhere else entirely without a clue on what you may have missed.


I didn't enjoy the writing that much, as I usually enjoy a descriptive writer and unfortunately the author seemed more intent on conveying deeper themes than setting the scene.
He also put in a lot of details that were just unnecessary, like this one:

He started the car, put it in gear, looked over his shoulder and pressed on the gas.
The car lurched forward, and he slammed on the brakes,

I don't need an up to date playbyplay on every second of this guy's life,

The entire book is written from ard person perspective, but towards the end the writer suddenly attempts engage with the readers:

Do you remember Officer Tines

It's important that you all know this so you know that William Tines was not a bad man.


The change is so abrupt, but I guess it fits with the general choppiness of this book.


I did like how the book brought up questions about humanity, and what makes us human, but it could have been executed much better than it was.


stars.

Cross Posted at sitelinkKaora's Corner,
Hay ocasiones en las que llega a tus manos una historia que acapara tu atención, Una de esas rarezas cuya principal baza es la de acaparar todos aquellos ingredientes que te gustan, que te ilusionan y que te generan una creciente obsesión por empezar su lectura cuanto antes.
Es de ese tipo de libros que compras sin tener apenas referencias porque percibías su magia desbordándose por las páginas.

En el caso de esta historia partía de la base de presentarnos una novela de género zombie, con la particularidad de que se alejaba por completo de las fórmulas que, una y otra vez, repetían paisajes ya conocidos.
En Vida y milagros de Stony Mayhall se apostaba por algo fresco y ambicioso, El nacimiento de un bebé zombie y como su inesperado crecimiento podría significar una esperanza para un futuro en el que estas criaturas admitían su razón de ser.

Y así es como comienza una aventura que, desde su inicio, sienta las bases de una sociedad llena de miedos pero que, a pesar de todo, pone todas las esperanzas en un ser cuyas evidentes diferencias no le impedía comportarse como un miembro más de cualquier familia americana.

Sin embargo, con el paso de las páginas, la historia comienza a diluirse, O a pudrirse, adecuándonos a la temática, Los acontecimientos que narra Daryl Gregory a lo largo del crecimiento de nuestro Stony no dejan de ser esbozos de situaciones cuya importancia en la trama viene determinada por unos saltos temporales en los que lastran cualquier mínimo de implicación con lo que está pasando.
A lo largo de las diversas situaciones que vive nuestro protagonista, pasamos de una núcleo familiar consolidado a otras localizaciones diferentes en las que, de manera abrupta, tiran por tierra cualquier inicio de empatía que hayas conseguido hasta ese momento.
Los personajes secundarios desaparecen de la trama para dar paso a una nueva aventura que, de nuevo, volverá a diluirse en el siguiente salto temporal.
El desconcierto que eso va generando en la historia hace que resulte imposible empatizar con los personajes y, por lo tanto, con la historia, llevándote a la más absoluta indiferencia ante los hechos que puedan estar pasando en el libro.

Así, vas viendo como nuestro protagonista va de un lado a otro conociendo personajes que entran y salen en la historia, que insinúan su trascendencia en la trama y que, finalmente, se unen al olvido general.

Eso no tiene que ser del todo malo, la verdad, Al fin y al cabo, nos encontramos con una historia cuya base es la de ver como crece un bebe zombie y como poco a poco evoluciona en un mundo lleno de complejidades.
Uno libro con esas premisas no aspira a lograr hacerse con un hueco entre las cumbres de la alta literatura.

Pero, partiendo de esa base, una historia como esta nos gana el corazón apostando por derrochar humor en cada una de sus páginas o, bien, por llenar las hojas de litros de sangre y tripas para cautivar a los amantes del género.
Y, sin embargo, ninguna de las alternativas aparecen en la novela, si bien es cierto que el sentido del humor se me antoja como la relación más personal que pueda existir entre una historia y un lector.
Si cualquier otro lector se divierte leyendo esta historia, entonces tan solo he de decir que no ha conectado conmigo.

De ese modo, toda la ilusión con la que partía al leer esta novela se transformó en decepción y, sobre todo, en tedio.
En un subgénero tan específico dentro de la literatura de terror como es el de las historias de muertos vivientes, es devastador el pasarte toda la novela contando las páginas que te quedan para terminarla.
Interested in more of my reviews Visit my sitelinkblog!

In Part I, the Mayhall family find a woman long dead on the side of the road with a baby wrapped up inside her coat.
Shortly after, Wanda Mayhall realizes what he really is, yet decides that they are going to keep him anyways and hide him from the world.
We watch Stony change and literally grow from a baby into a young man just as any normal living human being does.
We watch him become an integral part of the Mayhall family and develop into his own unique person, This was my favorite part of the novel,

Following Part I, which I was absolutely in love with, there was a major shift in the story and I wasnt exactly on board with it.
It became overly political, it became slightly philosophical, and I realize in retrospect that this was the world that the author was creating but it wasnt exactly how I thought the story was going to go or how I would have preferred it to go.
I did enjoy the scientific aspects of the story and how the Living Dead were researching to find out what made them the way they are and what made it possible.


Here was Thomass blood before he died, six hours after the bite: perfectly normal, And here was Thomass blood after he passed, at the:mark: dark, viscous, waxy, The transformation had occurred between observations, like the state change in a quantum particle, Like death itself.

Many parts of this book required a certain amount of imagination, The idea behind the zombies in this book was that “Consciousness was the key, ” At one point Stony explains how he once removed one of his toes and yet it still failed to decompose even though it was completely separated from his body.
Once the toe was finally off his mind and he had failed to continue checking on it and thinking about it, only then did it finally start rotting and decomposing.
I found this to be quite an interesting concept yet extremely hard to understand, Was that the only thing that kept these zombies alive That if they had stopped thinking about themselves as a living dead person would they simply cease to exist

Where one dead thing ended and another began was largely a problem of perception and definition.


Final Thoughts
I was overall disappointed with this book however, I think that was largely because I was expecting something different entirely.
I thought the storyline with the LD governments and the plans being hatched by them was pretty strange and largely unbelievable.
I had a hard time understanding where all the money came from how one person could be the sole benefactor of so many.
Also, the ending

was inevitable but a bit too anticlimactic I thought, I loved Stony in the beginning but I was pretty disappointed at how the rest of the story unfolded, .