Fiction: Autumn: The City by David Moody

By now, David Moody can be considered a poster boy for the new century publishing success story. On the tail of a handful of traditionally published books that sold poorly, Moody opted to electronically self-published Autumn in 2001. A decade later, that original book has been downloaded over half a million times and has been joined by other novels of horror and apocalypse like Dog Blood and Hater, the later of which is currently being made into a film by Guillermo Del Toro.

Autumn: The City (Thomas Dunne Books) follows up that impossibly successful download, but where Autumn dealt with the handful of people who escaped a city where 99 per cent of the population had been wiped out in a few minutes, Autumn: The City deals with the people who did not manage to escape.

Though the cover material proudly claims that Autumn: The City “never uses the ‘Z’ word,” make no mistake, this is a zombie novel.

In the desolate shell of the city, very little changed from day to day. Thousands of corpses continued to shuffle endlessly through the streets, their bodies gradually decaying, but with a degree of mental strength and control somehow continuing to slowly return.

While Moody doesn’t bring anything particularly new to the form, he does manage to keep readers perched on the edge of their seats. And if Autumn: The City does leave you wanting more, you don’t have long to wait: Autumn: Purification will show up in mid-August. Just don’t read about it now: the books very existence is a bit of a spoiler. ◊


Lincoln Cho is a freelance writer and editor. He lives in the Chicago area, where he works in the high-tech industry. He is currently working on a his first novel, a science-fiction thriller set in the world of telecommunications.