I never really thought of myself as a Zombie person, but the third installment of Savage Realms Press’ Anthology of Horror series might have changed my mind. Necro-Sapiens is yet another amalgamation of stories meant to send chills down spines and introduce readers to the world of the dead and perpetually damned.
From Savage Realms Press comes a truly unsettling assortment of tales about the undead guaranteed to haunt your dreams and stalk your waking hours!
Necro-Sapiens, Amazon
What first struck me was the seriousness Necro-Sapiens started out with, compared to book 2; where WTF started with high sexual tension and an AI sexpot-sexbot, Necro-Sapiens took us directly to the end of the world. Marie Lanza’s “Operation Colony” is a wartime effort where the world is lost, forced to repopulate frozen wastelands lest the remaining military and civilians want to be engulfed by waves of zombified people. Our main character has hope, but even that is quickly stamped out as the gravity of the situation comes to light. There is no real escape, and good deeds are the first to go unpunished.
The very next story, “Zombie Lesbian Bed Death” (Amanda M. Blake) was a tiny bit more lighthearted, but instead of laughs, we got sadness. The tale of two women slowly losing their memories and love for one another to a Zombie virus first comes off as a gag, soon becoming a story of grief and loss. In a world already in the aftermath of the rise of the undead, this one made me feel like I was missing something — certainly not the much-loved dildo these two were searching for, but of bygone times, cozy bedrooms of homes I used to live in, even friends I haven’t talked to in 25 years.
Like its predecessors, Necro-Sapiens features hundreds of pages from multiple authors. It does go around in terms of emotion (from hopelessness and grief, to jokes and unintentionally funny segments, then back to more trauma-inducing sequences), so it’s definitely not a complete downer the whole way through. As always, Savage Realms Press does an excellent job at procuring these stories and fitting them into an overarching theme for every book; here, I’d say it’s fleeting humanity that results in the rebirth of another sometimes-sentient being. The undead in any form are there to make us ponder about our own lives and what comes next. Necro-Sapiens adds to it by way of macabre tales and twisted insight about our fellow humans.
The dichotomy of stories — and really of all the books in this series — is strong in Necro-Sapiens. I don’t know if it was because the stories felt more serious and helpless than the others, or if it was the constant Zombie subject matter making me feel like the death of everything I had ever loved was only a second away. Regardless, Necro-Sapiens was enjoyable. Perhaps watching Zombies on-screen isn’t my jam, but reading about warring states, cannibalism, survival against all odds, and hope for humanity is something I will seek out more because of this book.
Necro-Sapiensย is available to purchase onย Amazon. For more from Savage Realms Press, visit theirย websiteย andย Instagram. Be sure to read my reviews of Symphony of the Damned and WTF as well.
