Book Review: Cemetery Club by JG Faherty


There are many beliefs that a place can become evil because of the history that has taken place there. Maybe there have been battles where many have died, or massacres that have killed many innocents but the idea is that when great evil is done there it sticks and it makes the place itself evil. It’s an idea that has been used in quite a few stories but done rightly it can be pretty original and entertaining. This is what Cemetery Club by JG Faherty uses as its main theme.

When they were young a group of friends formed the Cemetery Club, it was based on the simple fact that they would drink and get high and do stupid stuff in the cemetery near where they lived. It was innocent enough until one day they did something stupid and woke an ancient evil, this evil turned people into zombies whom in result attack others in the need to either eat their flesh or bring them back to the strange spectral creatures that lived under the cemetery to convert for their need. The Cemetery Club managed to stop the evil, or so they thought until years later as adults they find the evil has returned and they have to reunite to stop whatever it is under the cemetery for good, or die trying.

A zombie story at the moment has many traps it can fall into. The zombie right now seems to be a popular creature to use as the monster, especially in fiction published on the internet, everybody wants to write about zombies because quite frankly it’s getting hard to make the vampire or werewolf a popular scary creature. Although the fiction world is quite over saturated with the zombie right now though it’s possible to reach out over the horde of novels and be a true gem. I’ve read a few and reviewed them so I know they exist. The question is this one of those? For me it was a case of maybe. There are some things that definitely bugged me with this novel but in the end it did manage to get itself out of those problems. One example I will give is the use of the ex-husband as a tool to hinder the progress of the group in the tasks they must do.

To me this type of character is an easy and annoying tool to use as it’s been used so many times before. Now in saying that it’s an annoying character I will also defend the novel though because although he’s introduced he does not hinder the progress of the story for too long so that’s a plus. Another plus is the spectral beings that create the zombies too. Zombies are created in many ways, mostly of course it’s the dreaded bite that spreads the curse, which is one of the things to fear about the zombie itself but I found it more interesting that the zombie itself is more of a force in this story. The zombie is the horde, the army that do the bidding of the creatures that live under the cemetery they have only one use and that’s to do the grunt work as any soldier would.

What saves this novel for me in the end is the more unique way the zombie is used. Yes, it falls into some of the traps of using some stereotypical characters and themes to make the story progress but they don’t hinder the plot and it actually became interesting to see just how it’s all going to end. It’s fair to say that not everything in a novel can be truly unique so we have to go back to the over used subjects sometimes to help give the story a little meat, and this most definitely has meat. I’d argue that this novel is worth a read, JG Faherty creates a believable scenario that pulls you into what is taking place, even with an over reliance on some over used character types they manage to weave a story that will have you guessing until the end on just what the spectral creatures are.

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