The zombie craze comes to the Star Wars universe.

This book was interesting, if nothing else. The horror aspect, as well as the descriptions of gore and carnage, certainly takes Star Wars to a place it's never been before. It gave it a grittier feel, which I rather liked. I feel like the characters were a little flat, but hey, that's probably not what you're picking this book up for, am I right?

I thought the book was suitably creepy. Reanimated corpses are good for that much, at least, and the fact that the main characters knew some of the corpses in question really played on that. Add in the setting of a mostly deserted Star Destroyer, huge and yet claustrophobic at the same time, covered in bloodstains and full of nooks and crannies for zombies to hide, and Schreiber really has something working.

The only thing I really didn't like was the inclusion of two very well known characters from the Star Wars universe as main characters. In general, I'm sure the novels that contain the core characters are better received than those that don't; in this case, however, I felt like it really took something away from the story. You know these two are going to survive, and that drained most of the tension from any scenes they were in. I have to believe that horror is most effective when you don't know if the characters are going to have their brains gobbled out or not.

The rest of the crew was up for grabs, though, and I'm glad that not all of them made it through. Each time one of them met an end, it raised the stakes for everyone else, really kicked it up a notch. Overall, this was pretty cool. I'll have to pick up something else by Mr. Schreiber to see how well he handles mainstream horror (if there is such a thing). ( )