‘Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse?’ – Max Brallier (Gallery Books)


If you’re a regular visitor here, you’ll know that I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ style books; mostly ‘Fighting Fantasy’ (okay, pretty much all Fighting Fantasy actually) but every now and then, I like to step off the beaten track a little and see what else I can ‘choose my own adventure’ in. If you’re a regular visitor here, you’ll also know that I love anything with zombies in it so ‘Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse’ was a great chance to combine two of my favourite things and see what state I was in when I came out the other side. Living, dead or undead…

Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse? offers 150 Paths and 75 Endings (40 ending in death, 20 ending in zombification, and 15 ending in survival).

No longer are you given the luxury of sitting back and watching the fools on the page or screen make all the wrong moves. All hell is about to break loose - and this time you have a say in humanity's survival.

You're 27 years old. You live in a crappy, over-priced studio apartment in Manhattan. You work a corporate job that you're not particularly fond of. Up until now, your day-to-day life offered few surprises. But now, on a hot and humid July morning, zombies have come to Manhattan. You have choices to make now - lots of them. Moral dilemmas. Strategic decisions. Weapons. Vehicles. Will you be a hero? Or will you cover your own ass at all costs? Will you survive the coming hours, days, weeks, and months? Or will you die amidst the chaos and violence of a zombie uprising? Or, worst of all, will you become one of them...? The choice is yours. And if you don't make it, you've got no one to blame but yourself.

And… Wow, that was a rush! While there was no way that I was going to experience every ending (you’d be waiting on this post for a long time if I had…) I was still able to get a good feel for the number of ways there are to go through this book. And there are many. The death scenes are appropriately gory (and that’s including all the ones where you aren’t eaten) but what I really liked was that while there are ways to survive the book, your chances of surviving past the end of the book are still pretty bleak and that’s ‘Romero’ right there. Just because you made it to the end, doesn’t mean that your problems are over. Far from it. Brallier really hits the spot with this approach, adventuring (well, just trying to survive) in the short term but a hint of long term problems really adding to the atmosphere.

Brallier also really captures the feeling of outright panic that you’d get in a city surrounded by water and bubbling over with zombies. That urgency makes you focus on what’s in front of you and gets you thinking about what you should do next. A little knowledge of zombie movies will get you a long way here but Brallier still retains the capacity to surprise you when you least expect it. The obvious answer may be the right one but you could still end up getting bitten and I like the uncertainty we get here. All you can do is keep reading and hope you make it through, just like a real zombie apocalypse.

‘Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse?’ is as creepy as hell and with a nervous energy that keeps you focussed on making it out alive. If you’re a fan of choosing your own adventure, or just zombies, then you’ve probably read it already (it was published back in 2011) but if you haven’t… Do give it a go and see if you can make it out of Manhattan… 

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