Death Troopers

There will be some spoilers in this review and if you want be unspoiled I advise you not to look at the bottom picture. Which is a shame because it's really groovy.

Well, it's not a movie. It's a book. A Star Wars book. A Star Wars zombie book. Zombie stormtroopers, now thats a cool concept and I keep getting images of an entirely different ending to Return of the Jedi, where the ewoks are messily devoured by decaying stormtroopers and imperial officers. Oh, dreams are a wonderful thing.

For some reason my expectations were rather low and I assumed that this would geared toward a younger audience, and it's short length screams tight editing and as zombienovels go it's a bit toned down as in no major orgies of gore. It is still pretty violent though and works fine as a horror novel. Until a certain plot development that is, which I will come to later. Death troopers is about a Imperial prison barge breaking down on it's way to a colony. They discover an abandoned Imperial destroyer in the vicinity and boards it to find parts to repair their failing engines. Unfortunately they bring something else with them, a disease that kills in hours and, duh, rejuvenates the corpses who wake up hungry for human/wookian/misc alien flesh! Joe Schreiber is a decent writer and the pace is brisk and always entertaining. The horror parts are decent but the novel isnt fleshed out very much. 248 pages doesnt allow for much character development and it's over before you realize it. Not that it's a boring ride, on the contrary, but it's pretty lightweight stuff. And then there's that little plot thingie I was talking about earlier, something that kinda kills some of the suspense...

*SPOILER*
You see, two of the prisoners on the barge are a pair of rather well known smugglers: Han Solo and Chewbacca. Heard of them before? Yes, to get to use these characters were probably really fun for Schreiber but to the rest of us it means that there's not much hope of any really dark stuff happening.
*END SPOILER*

Oh well. Death troopers is a quick, entertaining read with no other intentions than just that. If you are a Star Wars fan and a zombiefan you will find this enjoying and it's perfect if you have 2-3 hours of spare time.


The picture is lying. There are no lightsabers in Death troopers. Lots of blasters though. And zombies.