Balladeer’s Blog’s Eighth Annual Christmas Carol-A-Thon continues! Since we’re not even into December yet this is the ideal time to look at this dark-humored version of A Christmas Carol that was done in the style of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
I AM SCROOGE – A ZOMBIE STORY FOR CHRISTMAS (2009) – Written by Adam Roberts. This book was a gift from a friend a few years ago and it’s pretty entertaining. Think of The Dead Next Door set at Christmas.
Roberts plays with various aspects of the narrative, even joking about superogatory “o’s” in Marley’s moan of “Scrooooge.” He peppers in a lot of similar jokes all the way through the book. The schtick is exactly what you would expect – the title is a joking reference to I Am Legend followed by Dickens’ qualification of A Christmas Carol as “A Ghost Story For Christmas.”
From there the beats of the tale follow their familiar – well, familiar-ISH – path. Scrooge’s nephew welcomes him with a cry of “Scary Christmas” instead of “Merry Christmas” and all of London is subjected to zombie attacks with all the expected zombie set pieces.
Marley’s Ghost is instead Marley’s Zombie and the Christmas Spirits are Christmas Zombies and so on. Needless to say Scrooge was turned off by Christmas long ago because of attacks by the undead around the holiday season.
Even Tiny Tim appears as a decomposing – but hungry – animated corpse. By story’s end Ebenezer Scrooge is filled with a new sense of purpose as he rallies his fellow Londoners to follow his lead in slaughtering the zombie hordes.
Or, as Scrooge beseeches his hastily-assembled army “Go bash ’em, every one!” I got a lot of laughs out of the book but there’s no denying that Adam Roberts should have cut it down by half at LEAST.
A one-joke premise needs to be over and done with before the reader has a chance to let themselves feel their eyes start to roll at the 9,795th variation of the same gag. +++
FOR MORE VERSIONS OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL CLICK HERE: https://glitternight.com/category/a-christmas-carol-2/
Balladeer's Blog 
Zombies zombies zombies! Is there a story they haven’t put zombies in?
At this point maybe not.