Soulless

by Christopher Golden

Times Square, New York City. Three mediums have gathered for a live broadcast on network television. They believe they can jointly create a massive communication network, thinning the barrier between this world and the next, and every spirit within a 300 mile radius will be able to cross over, briefly, to speak to grieving loved ones. What sounds like a miracle quickly becomes a nightmare - for 300 miles around fragments of corpses dig themselves out of the ground and seek out those they left behind with sinister intentions.

• ISBN10: 1416551352
• ISBN13: 9781416551355
• Publish Date: 27 November 2008 (first published 21 October 2008)
• Publish Status: Transferred
• Out of Print: 26 April 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: MTV Books
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 272
• Language: English

Reviews

[empressbrooke]

Christopher Golden is one of my favorite horror authors, and while I didn't like Soulless as much as some of his other novels (such as [book:Wildwood Road]), I still thought it was enjoyable and mostly well-written.

Soulless is a zombie novel with a twist - the zombies are inhabited by the negative side of the dead summoned by mediums on a morning talk show (the positive side having already moved on to the afterlife). These zombies are drawn back to their loved ones in order to taunt and eat them. And then the newly eaten dead people rise up and go find someone else to eat, providing a potentially-never-ending cycle of death.

The mediums didn't mean for this to happen, but now they're unconscious and mystically glued together. This being a YA novel, it's up to one of the medium's kids and a bunch of other teens to save the day.

Despite being a YA novel, it's pretty grim. The teens have to examine their personal morals as they try to survive the day and find a way to put the dead back in the ground where they belong. Golden has always been very good at making horrific situations seem hopeless and at resolving them without resorting to Hollywood-like flowers and sunshine endings.

The only thing that bugged me was that there didn't seem to be an authentic reason why the main characters were the only ones who took action to save the day. From the beginning of the story, it seemed like everyone trapped with the mediums knew what needed to be done to stop the zombies, but they delayed and debated long enough to let the action happen and the teens arrive on the scene. I would have preferred a little more reasoning behind why these kids and why then and not earlier.