Night of the Living Trekkies Review

Written by: Psyko113   

"Night of the Living Trekkies" tries to do exactly what it sounds like: Night of the Living Dead meets Star Trek. And for the most part, it does an awesome job of blending the two genre staples together.

The premise of the story is that in Houston, Texas, during a Star Trek convention known as GulfCon, a series of strange events converge together to reveal a zombie outbreak. The main character of the story is one Jim Pike, a man who grew up being a Star Trek fan and later in life joined the army. However, after two tours of duty in Aghanistan, he fails to see the magic in life, and has settled for a role working at one of Houston's hotels. During the nights events, he encounters a variety of fans at the convention, including his little sister, Rayna, and a premed-student-turned-convetion-model dressed up as Princess Leia (and fitting a first meeting, he finds her dressed in the famous slave costume while tied down to a bed!).

The writing team of Kevin David Anderson and Sam Stall definitely put their geekdom to work here. The book is filled with references to the various incarnations throughout the Star Trek series (and there's some references to others, mostly noticable of which being Star Wars, but if you read into it enough, you can actually find even a King of the Hill reference, whether it was intentional or not). However, a lot of these references are quickly explained, which is fine for those that have no clue about such thngs, but at the same time sort of takes a way the appeal, making things leff of an "insider" type of thing and dumbing it down.

Similarly, the book veers more toward a sci-fi angle than a horror one (don't worry, there's still plenty of the latter to be found), especially as the book comes toward it's end. But that's fitting the sci-fi influence, so it's not so much a flaw, just a tad on the predictable side.

The book is a nice, quick read, and is a good bit of entertainment/distraction for someone who has an afternoon to kill. If you're a fan of either zombies or anything Star Trek related, you'll get a good read out of this. Or, if you're just a sci-fi/horror fan in general, it's good to give it a shot. It's not the greatest, but it's fun.