Book Review: Deck Z: The Titanic: Unsinkable. Undead. by Chris Pauls and Matt Solomon

This is the second story I've read that uses the Titanic disaster as the backdrop to a horror story.  The first was Carpathia by Matt Forbeck, which involves vampires.  This one involves a zombie outbreak.  I have to say, for some reason seeing how an author mixes a story like this into the timeline of the sinking of the Titanic is interesting and appealing.

The story starts in a similar way to James Cameron's film Titanic - people on a submersible are collecting relics from the wreck at the bottom of the ocean, and they come across a flask.  Then, the story steps back to 1912 to a German scientist who flees with a virus that he is concerned elements of his government are trying to weaponize.

Ultimately, our protagonist attempts to escape on the Titanic, hoping to hide and develop a cure.  But..as the proverb goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  Ultimately, things don't go as he plans and the virus ends up spreading through the ship shortly after it sets sail.  He comes to realize that some people have been infected, and he enlists the help of the Captain to put a stop to things.

I have to say that this story was very appealing, and was very engaging right up until the end.  There were some nice surprises along the way, and I was really interested in seeing how this story would map to the real events that took place on Titanic, as reported by survivors - I didn't see how it could be pulled off.

In the end, aside from a few relatively minor changes (such as the reason why the final boilers were lit to speed up the boat - it wasn't to arrive earlier than expected to prove that Titanic was truly the fantastical ship of dreams), there is little impact to how Titanic encounters the iceberg.  I was expecting there to be more of a connection.  I had to assume that anyone who knew anything about the zombie outbreak simply would not be among the survivors, which would explain why the knowledge of the outbreak was not known.  For the most part, this is the case.

The story wraps up rather suddenly, which was a bit of a surprise.  As I mentioned above, I expected there to be more of an explanation of how events impacted the voyage of Titanic, and perhaps even contributed to its encounter with the iceberg, but my expectations were not met.  The ending leaves things open to a potential sequel.

While the story itself ultimately fell short of my expectations, I did thoroughly enjoy this story.  The writing style was engaging, and the origin of the zombies was new and different.