It all started with a young adult writer’s blog post in February 2007. After a comment and a contradicting blog post by another author, the subject sparked a huge debate in the YA lit world, then ignited into one of the greatest geek war of all time: which is made for better fiction, zombies or unicorns?
In an attempt to bring an end to this epic literary bloodsport, authors Holly Black (of the Spiderwick Chronicles fame) and Justine Larbalestier (of the Magic and Madness trilogy) compiled stories that defend both camps—amazing stories thrown into the arena by internationally renowned YA authors. Black and Larbalestier serve these in a silver tray that is the Zombies vs. Unicorns anthology and let the readers decide which team should be declared the winner.
Like all other short story collections, ZvU is a mixed bag. There are a few duds, but popping it open is such a fun experience. In this anthology I saw plot twists that most novels could barely pull off, characters that I love instantly by just the tone of their voice and small actions, places that fascinated me immediately unlike the lackluster settings in tomes that took me twenty chapters before I can appreciate them.
Here is a list of the stories in the collection (just click on the titles and you’ll be redirected to the reviews of each story):
- The Highest Justice by Garth Nix*
- Love Will Tear Us Apart by Alaya Dawn Johnson*
- Purity Test by Naomi Novik
- Bougainvillea by Carrie Ryan*
- A Thousand Flowers by Margo Lanagan
- The Children of the Revolution by Maureen Johnson*
- The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn by Diana Peterfreund*
- Innoculata by Scott Westerfeld*
- Princess Prettypants by Meg Cabot
- Cold Hands by Cassandra Clare*
- The Third Virgin by Kathleen Duey
- Prom Night by Libba Bray*
Now tell me that’s not a star-studded roster. :P My favorite zombie story is Love Will Tear Us Apart, which I loved unreservedly because I’m such a sucker for fictions with rock music and poetry references (Joy Division and Robert Frost? You gotta love the author!). The story is sickeningly charming and awesome too, though this won’t be much of a keeper for anyone uncomfortable with too many f-bombs in a single page. My favorite unicorn story is The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn, because the story kicks butt and it has a one of a kind three-dimensional heroine. Also, I love the idea of King David’s descendants becoming the most likely trainers for unicorns.
I commend the authors who submitted “open-minded” stories; it’s nice to think that the YA world is slowly being more accepting of LGBTQ themes. Love Will Tear Us Apart and Prom Night both have gay characters while Inoculata has lesbian heroines. It would be inappropriate to say that there is a homosexual utopia in a crumbling, zombie-ridden apocalyptic world, but that’s what it seems to me (or maybe it’s just no one really cares about your sexuality in a world where there are more important and dangerous things to worry about). It’s wonderful how different authors came up with a little common denominator.
Hands down, this is definitely one of my favorite anthologies. Admittedly I like novels more than short stories, with all the obvious reasons: a novel gives you ticket for a longer stay in an amazing setting and more time to spend with the characters involved. You grow and love everything in the paper-bounded world in your hands one page at a time. With short stories, this is rarely achieved—ten pages are often not enough to arrest the full attention of a reader. But being a senior college student who wishes there are more than 24 hours in a day, an anthology is some kind of a blessing, as they contain miniature worlds that I can finish traveling in just a few hours. And if the anthology in your hand has a caliber tantamount to that of Zombies vs. Unicorns, I assure you that all the time you spent reading it will not be wasted.
The winner for me? Not team zombie or team unicorn.
The winner is the reader.
* indicates stories that I enjoyed.
ZOMBIES VS. UNICORNS ROUND SIX!
Story Reviews for Duey and Bray
from Zombies Vs. Unicorns Anthology
___
The Third Virgin
by Kathleen Duey
If your favorite unicorns are the Lisa Frank type or the ones you imagine springing out of the fairytales your mother reads to you long time ago before you escape to dreamland, Kathleen Duey’s story contribution will definitely not float your boat.
The Third Virgin is perhaps one of the longest stories in the anthology, and in my mind’s catalogues I filed this under the heading ‘not really enjoyed’, right next to Margo Lanagan’s A Thousand Flowers. Not because I prefer fluffy unicorns—they’re too cloying in my opinion—but because the story is not engaging enough, and I admit I almost gave up and left it unfinished.
This is the only story in the collection that was told from the perspective of a unicorn, which is a bit new to me because the only tales I’ve read with animal POVs are the fables we have in our elementary and high school textbooks (with the exception of Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which I loved to death). I think this would pass up as a dark fairytale, but there’s something about the dull and melodramatic tone of the narrator that had me rolling my eyes. The gist: it is about a unicorn searching for the virgin who could finally kill him. He is desperately trying to escape a life he mostly spent ‘appearing’ to be helping people but actually taking more years of their lives. Now, I can tolerate a lot of melodrama, but overkill is a no-no for me. The narrator is like, an emo unicorn or something.
All in all, not a very good read.
____
Prom Night
by Libba Bray
After reading this story, I immediately scribbled Going Bovine by Libba Bray on my list of to-reads this 2011.
Prom Night is an eerily realistic take on a zombie apocalypse, where parents are already zombified and the children are the only ones left to survive. For me, the most disturbing part is how most of the kids have hardened; you could feel through their actions that they have gone through a lot already before the story started. There are a few times when their adult shells would show a few cracks, flashbacks surging in to thaw their hearts and send their consciences in chaos. I love how the heroine effectively stood out as a flawed character, and how her sidekick, Jeff, acted with rationality and still be able to goof around (his entrance into the Prom is cool and fun).
Zoroastrianism, drugs, punk kids, teen police officers, and the slowly disintegrating hope of survival all rolled into one haunting package—you’ve got to agree that this is one fitting ending to an amazing compendium. It left me an uneasy, tingling feeling.
This is not a regular story; it does not have a climax to speak of, no denouement, and no real ending. It’s like we took a peek from the future to know what it would be like, and plunged back into the present when the fireworks set off in the end to announce that the time is up.
____
MY VERDICT FOR THIS ROUND:
Team Unicorns- 0
Team Zombies- 1
Total as of Round Six:
Team Unicorns- 2
Team Zombies- 6
(Round One is HERE)
(Round Two is HERE)
(Round Three is HERE)
(Round Four is HERE)
(Round Five is HERE)
YOU PREFER UNICORNS TO ZOMBIES? MY GOD, I DON’T EVEN KNOW IF YOU’RE MY BROTHER ANYMORE! “Hank, you probably don’t know this but young adult authors are feuding for months over the question of whether or not zombies or unicorns are preferable. And I frankly cannot believe that a member of my own family is on the unicorn side.”
-John Green
This vid is a little old, and I just stumbled upon it a couple of days ago while searching infos about John Green’s novella called Zombicorns (which has nothing to do about unicorns, as stated in the disclaimer). He’s on Team Zombies! Wooot!
And I just wondered, if he has this public anti-unicorn declaration of sorts, why hasn’t he contributed to the Zombies vs. Unicorns anthology? Meh. Not that it’s a big deal. At least he wrote his own piece about it. :)Will definitely provide a review for the novella.
MORNING WEBCAMWHORAGE. Me flaunting my white minnie mouse ears and tattered shirt copy of Zombies vs. Unicorns. This collection is jam-packed with awesome literary explosions (just look at the authors who contributed!)…and it’s got a pretty retro-like zombie-unicorn war art when it’s naked LOL.
I recommend this anthology! Finished it a couple of weeks ago and I still have the book hangover. :) Also, please do get the real thing. Reading it in e-book form is convenient and cheaper, right, but having the hardback in your hand is…sexier. *shrugs*
And now you think I’m a book fetishist haha.
ZOMBIES VS. UNICORNS ROUND FIVE!
Story Reviews for Cabot and Clare
from Zombies Vs. Unicorns Anthology
___
Princess Prettypants
by Meg Cabot
When I read “Princess Prettypants”, I suddenly missed my Liza Frank stickers and school supplies I once had in my grade school days. From that statement alone you should already have an idea what kind of creature our first author wrote about for this round.
Meg Cabot, bestselling writer of the famous series The Princess Diaries, decided to take a plunge into this geeky debate about what creature is better for weaving great fiction, choosing the side of—surprise!—Team Unicorn. In her contribution, Cabot was able to create a hilarious and rainbow-colored high school tale (literally and metaphorically) about love, magic, expectations, and sweet revenge.
“Princess Prettypants” is like a mini chick-lit for high schoolers with a mythical twist: there’s a classic Cabot heroine and a storyline propped up with a cute rainbow-farting (no kidding) unicorn as some sort of a deus ex machina, so no other evidence is needed to prove this. It sounds like a dud in this anthology of awesome literary explosions, right? Not exactly: Cabot sprinkled a little bit of wicked playfulness on her style, using all the fluff mentioned above to poke fun at most people’s stereotyped view of unicorns. For the record, that’s plus points in my book.
Basically the story is about a girl celebrating her seventeenth birthday, where she receives a unicorn named Princess Prettypants—poor thing!—as a present from her quirky aunt. A friend gets into trouble and our heroine rides her unicorn to save the day. I swear I can imagine a silly little flick in my head, and if that’s what Cabot is aiming, then she succeeds.
One of my guilty pleasures is liking anything that oozes with cuteness and sweetness…except if we are talking about young adult novels. I make it a point to steer clear of the overly cheesy and hackneyed variety, not because they are bad, but because they pop out like mushrooms in bookstores—different titles and covers but containing the same thing—trying to lure teenyboppers in their bandwagon. I think that too much of this is not good for a reader’s mind…but whatever, people read with different motives, mine may be different from theirs.
Anyway, I used to think that Cabot is one of the writers who do this—maybe she still is—but this tale told me she can write something that can actually float my boat even for a while. My constant thought while reading the story is “Cabot really created something that mocks a bubblegum-colored unicorn?” Take that as a metaphor. It’s a first, I think.
I liked it. I sound like Justine Larbalestier haha.
____
Cold Hands
by Cassandra Clare
Cassandra Clare is perhaps one of the most famous authors under the fantasy/ paranormal romance umbrella nowadays, having penned the Mortal Instruments series (I’m still reading the third book, City of Glass) and its prequel series, the Infernal Devices. So I know how she wrote about shadowhunters and demons—now I found out how she wrote about zombies.
Coming from Clare, I sort of expected that her contribution to the anthology, “Cold Hands”, would be a love story. Here the dead are not your typical flick zombies; they don’t eat brains and entrails, all they ever wanted to do when they come back to life is to be with their loved ones. The town of Lychgate has this curse and no one who lives there can go anywhere else because the dead will follow them. This precipitates for the world to create the moniker “Zombietown” for the place. Adele and her lover, the Duke-in-waiting James, are happy despite living there. But when James is killed, everything is thrown off balance until James attempts to take his rightful place—at the throne and right beside Adele.
The story was decent. It’s not something I’ll give a thumb down, but it’s not one of the stories here that took the cake either. The idea of the dead becoming part of the norm is cool, I think, but if you notice the glaring plot holes that come with it, it wouldn’t be as great. The characters are okay, too—tragic figures in the middle of a somber setting. I was relieved that Adele didn’t fall into a Bella Swan-like trance when James died, though for a moment I thought she’d be like that, considering how much she claimed to love the man. The title already gives away clues as to what would happen, so I expected the implied necrophilia at the end (guh, my exposure to this kind of literature is making me so immune and I don’t know if it’s a bad thing or not).
Anyway, there are mini-stories incorporated in the main storyline to make it colorful in its own way, and I liked it. Over all it’s a really good story.
____
MY VERDICT FOR THIS ROUND:
Team Unicorns- 1
Team Zombies- 1
ANOTHER TIE! :)
Total as of Round Three:
Team Unicorns- 2
Team Zombies- 5
(Round One is HERE)
(Round Two is HERE)
(Round Three is HERE)
(Round Four is HERE)
Since we’re only a round away from the end, it’s safe to say that the Zombies, for me, win. :P I’m still going to review the last two stories though.
WHY ZOMBIES ARE BETTER THAN UNICORNS
by Scott Westerfeld
1. Zombies are often thought of as destroyers of civilization, but they are really peaceable folk. Have you ever seen a zombie start a war? Burn down a building? Or even smash a car window? Of course not. Zombies are lovers of a nice slow walk, light conversation, and hanging out in shopping malls and near remote cabins.
2. Zombies are healthy. No sniffles, no head colds, no swine flu in the zombie population. In fact, zombiism is the cure for everything, except possibly the disease of having your head removed from your spinal column.
3. Zombies are green. They don’t drive cars. They don’t use air conditioning. In fact they have no carbon footprint of any kind, just a bit of methane outgassing. Plus, they’re actually green.
4. Zombies don’t require much upkeep. They enjoy their food (which is us) but they don’t really need it. They can hang around for decades without so much as a nibble. (The exceptions are those zombies in 28 Days Later, which only last four weeks. But that’s only because they kept RUNNING everywhere. Stupid rage virus.)
5. Zombies teach us to slow down, to shuffle, even, and to enjoy life while it lasts. Which is forever.
6. Zombies make you feel less stupid about all that sporting equipment and those power tools you bought and never used.
7. Zombie outbreaks teach us the virtues of preparedness and fitness.
8. Zombies don’t love you for shallow reasons, they love you for your brains. (Which doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate your body. And your delicious entrails.)
9. Zombies don’t sweat the little stuff, like how their hair looks today. They take life in stride, if by “stride” one means “shamble,” “lurch,” or perhaps even “crawl along despite loss of several limbs.”
10. Zombies are tolerant. They don’t care about the color of your skin. In fact, they aren’t even worried about the flavor of your skin, just that it’s wrapped around your delicious entrails.
In short, zombies are us, the way we wish we were. Healthier, happier, and considerably more immortal. So really, when people hate them, perhaps the fault lies not in our zombies, but in ourselves.
ZOMBIES VS. UNICORNS ROUND FOUR!
Story Reviews for Peterfreund and Westerfeld
from Zombies Vs. Unicorns Anthology
___
The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn
by Diana Peterfreund
Remember that cliché saying about not judging a book by its cover? It’s a good advice, proven time and again, but I suggest we add another word at the end: ‘don’t judge a book by its cover and title’.
That’s basically what I stamped in my head after reading Diana Peterfreund’s short story “The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn”. I automatically rolled my eyes when I read the title, expecting lots of cloying fluff and cutesy goodness that only girls with unicorn fetish will like. The impression lasted for only a few paragraphs into the story, because when the plot finally leaps from the springboard that Peterfreund set, it didn’t offer a warning or even a reader’s “harness” of any sort—and it soared high.
“The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn” is not as lighthearted as it sounds; in fact I felt like there was a little tinge of Final Destination in the beginning, what with the group of young friends frolicking around a place where they could possibly meet death, plus a psychic heroine on the forefront.
The main plothole comes right under your nose—when exactly did the story take place? Obviously it’s a modern society but one where unicorns exist and are feared. Unless it’s an imaginary timeline it isn’t really believable. Be that as it may, it seems like it’s indeed a made-up timeline, so when the readers accept that fact they can easily go on without so much ranting about it.
The character development of Wen, the protagonist, is the main reason I’m taking my hat off to Peterfreund. Wen is full of doubts and fears, still a neophyte when it comes to using her supernatural abilities, pressured by her parents’ expectations, and traumatized by an event in the past that messes with her present. She’s practically this balled up negativities in human shape—couple that with her sometimes-stupid thought processes and impulsiveness, and she will easily become one of the weakest antiheroines that you’ll encounter in modern literature. That never happened though, because Peterfreund knows how to play with characterization: she shows Wen’s strengths gradually, which, ironically, are sometimes accentuated by her weaknesses. The author triumphantly created a powerful picture in the end, when Wen makes up her mind and stands up for what she believes in.
This is perhaps my favorite unicorn short story in this collection.
____
Inoculata
by Scott Westerfeld
I will try my best to not to fall into a fangirly pit at this point, but I can’t be sure if I can make that a promise. After all, we’re talking about Scott Westerfeld here—author of the Uglies series (Uglies, Pretties, Specials, Extras) and the Leviathan trilogy (Leviathan and Behemoth), which I both loved. There is no denying that he’s one of my favorites, and his short story contribution didn’t let me down.
“Inoculata” follows the story of the last survivors of a zombie apocalypse, zeroing in on Alison, one of the four youngest members of the bunch. Within the barbed wires surrounding the marijuana farm that keeps them safe from the hungry zombies, their lives only revolve around hopes of escape, rationed foods, zombie attack drills, and saving ammunitions. That is until Alison learns of a secret from a fellow survivor Kalyn—one that can allow them to go out into the world without fearing for their safety.
Westerfeld really has a knack for creating dystopian worlds; the bleak and hopeless setting of this story reminded me of how great he can be when it comes to world-building. There’s no way you can’t be sucked in, especially if this world’s strewn with characters that you’ll easily care about/ hate/be intrigued by in the first few pages. What makes it more appealing is that Westerfeld throws a science fiction-ish element here again, in the form of an “illness”. This propels the story into a great direction, one that is left to the readers for interpretation in the end.
In this collection, I think this is the counterpart in of Alaya Dawn Johnson’s Love Will Tear Us Apart, at least when it comes to the characters. Seriously—half-zombies, and it’s because of some kind of an infection? Same-sex relationships (female to female this time)? You see the similarities and they click together. “Inoculata” is a little less personal since it doesn’t focus much on romance. Instead, the spotlight is on the characters’—and the world’s—possible future with all the zombies still roaming the world.
Unsurprisingly, this is an awesome read. My only rant is that it felt a little hanging in the end, though I suspect that Westerfeld did it in purpose.
____
MY VERDICT FOR THIS ROUND:
Team Unicorns- 1
Team Zombies- 1
IT’S A TIE! :)
Total as of Round Three:
Team Unicorns- 1
Team Zombies- 4
4. As a kid in Baltimore once wisely pointed out, there’s a lot of speculation about what a zombie apocalypse might be like, but imagine how much more awesome a unicorn apocalypse would be. (via Ten Reasons Why Unicorns Are Better than Zombies - Babel Clash)
I love you Holly Black, but I’ve already had enough of the unicorn fluff. Hahaha!
I’m on Team Zombie (after reading your anthology). :P
