The Last Weekend

by Nick Mamatas

Vasilis “Billy” Kostopolos is a Bay Area Rust Belt refugee, failed sci-fi writer, successful barfly and, since the exceptionally American zombie apocalypse, an accomplished “driller” of reanimated corpses. There aren’t many sane, well-adjusted human beings left in San Francisco, but facing the end of the world, Billy’s found his vocation trepanning the undead, peddling his one and only published short story, and drinking himself to death.

Things don’t stay static for long. Billy discovers that both his girlfriends turn out to be homicidal revolutionaries. He collides with a gang of Berkeley scientists gone berserker. Finally, the long-awaited “Big One” shakes the foundation of San Francisco to its core, and the crumbled remains of City Hall can no longer hide the awful secret lurking deep in the basement. Can Billy unearth the truth behind America’s demise and San Francisco’s survival—and will he destroy what little’s left of it in the process? Is he legend, the last man, or just another sucker on the vine?

Nick Mamatas takes a high-powered drill to the lurching, groaning conventions of zombie dystopias and conspiracy thrillers, sparing no cliché about tortured artists, alcoholic “genius,” noir action heroes, survivalist dogma, or starry-eyed California dreaming. Starting in booze-soaked but very clear-eyed cynicism and ending in gloriously uncozy catastrophe, The Last Weekend is merciless, uncomfortably perceptive, and bleakly hilarious.

Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

Genres: Horror, Zombies, Audiobook, Fiction, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Fantasy

252 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2014

About the author

Nick Mamatas is the author of the Lovecraftian Beat road novel Move Under Ground, which was nominated for both the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild awards, the Civil War ghost story Northern Gothic, also a Stoker nominee, the suburban nighmare novel Under My Roof, and over thirty short stories and hundreds of articles (some of which were collected in 3000 Miles Per Hour in Every Direction at Once). His work has appeared in Razor, Village Voice, Spex, Clamor, In These Times, Polyphony, several Disinformation and Ben Bella Books anthologies, and the books Corpse Blossoms, Poe's Lighthouse, Before & After: Stories from New York, and Short and Sweet.

Nick's forthcoming works include the collection You Might Sleep... (November 2008) and Haunted Legends, an anthology with Ellen Datlow (Tor Books 2009).

A native New Yorker, Nick now lives in the California Bay Area.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mamatas channels the spirit (for lack of a better phrase) of Fante and Bukowksi, but puts his own spin on the struggling-loser-drunkard-wannabe-writer story, plus the zombie apocalypse, satirizing all comers, including yourself and himself. Funny, maddening, disturbing, often all at once. And there's a scene in here that has more emotional punch than six seasons of the Walking Dead.

Some lazy non-post-apocalyptic weekend I'd like to re-read this back-to-back with John Fante's ASK THE DUST. Arturo Bandini and Vasilis Kostopolos would make quite the pair. The losers.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read 2/19/15 - 3/1/15
3 Stars - Recommended to fans of zombie lit that actually focuses more on the lit than the zombie
Pages: 215
Publisher: PS Publishing
Released: March 2014 (overseas)


How do you become a better writer? Apparently, you drink like a fish, sleep with a lot of chicks while your heart desires the one you can no longer have, develop a strong sense of self-loathing, and pray for a zombie apocalypse. That's what Nick Mamatas' The Last Weekend really boils down to.

A bit of a high-brower, this zombie novel is less about the zombies and more about the writer who's writing it.

Our protagonist, Vasilas "Billy" Kostopolis, is a bit of an introvert and a bar dweller in the before AND after times. Pre-apocalypse, he went out to observe and note and digest content for his stories. And though he wrote, he wasn't incredibly successful at it. After the world changed, the bars were where he went to kill time till the next call came in to protect the living and prepare the recently dead for eternal rest. Because in the after times, our boy Billy is what you called a "driller", summoned to the bedside of the dying and very-recently-dead to push a drill bit deep into their brains before they had a chance to reanimate.

Billy seems to have fun waving his education in all of our faces and spends a lot of time knocking around town, less concerned with the reanimated and more interested in making a nuisance of himself among the lady-kinds, gathering up experiences which are ultimately being relayed to us via his book. This book.

It's all incredibly meta. And not at all what I expected.

Honestly, I don't understand how Mamatas expected us to take the zombie apocalypse seriously when his own protagonist claims to remember the details of 9/11 better than the day the dead started to rise.

I mean, what're the chances that you'd be the dude who actually sleeps through the first few days of the apocalypse? Hungover and heart-broken, Billy awakens to his apartment door being beaten down by soldiers, him and everyone else in town forced to evacuate.

And to make it even more surreal, I'm not sure these are the types of things I would concern myself with, but when initially coming to terms with the whole "the dead are up and walking around" thing, Billy actually contemplates what it will mean to be a writer now that all of your competition is dead, not to mention all the other people like... oh you know... agents and bookstores and an audience to sell to.

He also ponders Yvette, his before-the-shit-hit-the-fan love, and Alexia, his current and floundering deep-in-the-shit love. He even has the gall to ponder his lack of romantic bedroom moves. Le sigh. The cares and concerns of a brain-driller during these strange, trying times.

For the fun of it, Mamatas throws in a bit of secret city conspiracy stuff, in which our protag and his friends smoothly find themselves in the midst of, and then.... well, just when it feels like the book might start to really go somewhere, it all sort of fizzles out.

And not to nitpick, but where did the title The Last Weekend come from? Unless I missed it completely, I'm not getting why it's the last weekend.

The whole zombie piece was treated with no more attention than a minor rodent infestation. Just one more hassle for the humans to have to deal with. Society seems intent to carry on regardless. Cell phones and the internet still function, for the most part. Twenty-somethings still find reasons to party. The beer still flows at the pubs. It was all a little too "struggling writer and woe-is-me"for my tastes. And it was a bit painful to read at times. I mean, I'm all for smart literature. But this was achingly-aware-of-itself smart literature (so many eye rolls, you guys) and the introverted tendencies of our guy Billy kept us so far removed from everything that he made it really difficult to empathize with the characters.

Overall, I found The Last Weekend to be lacking - a bit of a non-event, a fumbling bumbling addition to what is becoming an increasingly impressive sub-genre of apocalyptic fiction. While I can appreciate Mamatas' decision to separate himself from the pack, I don't think this book achieved what he set out to accomplish.

[Michael Hicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

My original THE LAST WEEKEND audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

The Last Weekend, by Nick Mamatas, is billed as a novel of “zombies, booze, and power tools,” which may be the truthiest bit of truth in advertising that ever was. This sucker is chock full of all three, and each are at the core of Billy Kostopolos’s world and, to a degree, his identity.

The Last Weekend is told in first-person, so we get to know Billy pretty well (whether we like it or not). Billy is a haughty writer and alcoholic who hides his many insecurities behind choice phrases he has memorized from literature, lobbing out quotes from Shakespeare and Charles Bukowski in an effort to impress and/or alienate those around him. To put it simply, Billy’s pretty much a jackass. After being scorned by his girlfriend, he’s fled west to San Francisco without much in the way of advanced planning beyond drinking himself to death. He just so happens to wake up hungover one morning in the midst of the zombie apocalypse and decides to become a particular brand of city employee known as a driller. With supplies short, drillers are equipped with, naturally enough, power drills to destroy the brains of the infected. Even though he’s mostly waiting to die, Billy is still a writer first-and-foremost, and he chases experiences in order to give his words weight, and there’s not much weightier in the world anymore than running a drill bit through some old lady’s brain pan.

Like all really good zombie stories, this book is not about the zombies per se. True, the zombies provide plenty of impetus for action and reaction, but they’re largely set dressing to gussy up the plot. The real story here is Billy and the society he lives in, as people are forced to reconnect and survive in a post-apocalyptic world of sorts (America, we learn early on, is the only country affected by this plague of the undead). Mamatas has lots to say about the nature and struggles of being a writer, as well as alcoholism and depression. This all gets wrapped up in a dark sheen of cynical, black humor, occasional bouts of wicked violence, and an interesting detour through the history of the 49ers gold rush, SanFran cemeteries and burial rites.

Narrator Kevin T. Collins delivers a terrific performance with his narration, hitting all the right alternating beats of insecure and sanctimonious to bring Billy to life. Billy may not always be the ideal protagonist to spend eight hours with, but Collins makes this an easily enjoyable listen and serves Mamatas’s material quite well. The production quality is top-notch, and the audio is clean.

The Last Weekend is an easy book to recommend for horror fans looking for a more literary ride through zombie-town, or maybe just for those who thought Leaving Las Vegas needed a good dose of the undead and power tools. I suspect, though, that if there are any other authors giving this a listen, some of the material may hit uncomfortably close. Now, if you’ll excuse me, after having spent a few days in the company of one Billy Kostopolos, I think I need a drink.

[Audiobook provided for review by the audiobookreviewer.com]

[Karl]

This is copy 3 of 100 signed numbered copies signed by Nick Mamatas.

[Frank Errington · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite having the word "Zombies" in the title this novel is far from your typical zombie fare. If you're looking for a brain munching gore-fest, you may want to look elsewhere.

On the other hand, if you're familiar with the Billy Wilder directed film-noir, The Lost Weekend, based o n Charles R. Jackson's 1944 novel of the same name about an alcoholic writer, then you're in for a real treat.

It is within this context that The Last Weekend: A Novel of Zombies, Booze, and Power Tools is a great success.

In post apocalyptic San Francisco, Vasilis “Billy” Kostopolos, failed writer and accomplished barfly, finds work as a "driller" for the city. It's his job to respond to calls to find the newly dead and destroy the brain before they can reanimate. There's a great line in his interview for the job where one of the interviewers asks his current occupation. When Billy responds with writer, the second interviewer tells the first to put down "unemployed."

Mamatas fills this story with interesting characters, top to bottom, even incidental characters, like a typewriter salesman, are fully fleshed out.

The Last Weekend: A Novel of Zombies, Booze, and Power Tools is a solid literary work on the life a "writer" after the onset of the zombie apocalypse.

First published in March of 2014 by PS Publishing, The Last Weekend: A Novel of Zombies, Booze, and Power Tools is now available in Hardback, Paperback, and e-book formats from Night Shade Books.

Recommended.

Nick Mamatas is the author of six and a half novels and several collections. Nick is also an anthologist and editor of short fiction including the Bram Stoker Award-inning Haunted Legends (co-edited with Ellen Datlow). His fiction and editorial work has been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award five times, the Hugo Award twice, the World Fantasy Award twice, and the Shirley Jackson, International Horror Guild, and Locus Awards.

[Badseedgirl · Rating 1 out of 5]

Per FTC guidelines this review for The Last Weekend by Nick Mamatas is for a book received for free in a Goodreads.com First Read Giveaway.

This is a publication by the publisher Night Shade Books for the 2014 British release of The Last Weekend by Nick Mamatas. This novel annoyed me right from the minute I opened the package, and read the review quote by Brian Keene. The quote starts with “The Last Weekend is a headshot to a tiresome trope….” Ok that is some pretty cheeky words from a man who has written not one, not two, but no less than EIGHT zombie novels. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. I’m not sure that this was the best quote to be using on a “zombie trope” novel.

And the thing is, this isn’t even a zombie novel. Yes, there are some zombies in it, but they are just background. They are used as a prop to show and support the narrator, named Charlie’s slow decent into drunken self-destruction. In this novel people, hired by the city of San Francisco to kill zombies, or more specifically people about to die, are called “Drillers” because they are issued a cordless drill to drill a neat hole in the dying person’s head. This is a most undesirable job and only the desperate or crazy will or can do it for very long. Of course Charlie is a driller.

I’m not sure is the author meant to do it, but Charlie has to be the most narcissistic, pompous douche-bag I have ever read about. In addition to being a “Driller,” pre and post zombie outbreak, Charlie wanted to be a writer. He displays every tired, overused, and clichéd aspect of the “struggling writer.” I swear about 30 pages in I just wanted to punch his whiny ass to the ground and then kick in his pompous mouth.

Because the character was so completely unlikable, it made it incredibly hard for me to enjoy the novel. I will say Mr. Mamatas was able to write some strong women voices, unfortunately they were also; a. self-absorbed, b. crazy, or c. and romping combination of both.

I finished this novel because I got it as a giveaway and I felt the only way to be able to give it an honest review was to finish it. I did it, I did not like it, and I would have a hard time recommending it to people.

1 of 5 stars

[Tammy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The nitty-gritty: More literary ramble than horror, Mamatas' bleak look at a changed world is beautifully written with sharp spikes of sudden violence.

I signed up for drilling because I couldn’t get down to Mexico. I needed to experience life, to find something to write about. I needed pocket money. My credit score was immaterial, my landlord dead, and as electricity only worked fourteen hours a day PG&E just let the grid run and stopped billing. But the agora bloomed on Market Street once again, and most anything could be had for the right combination of trade goods, favors, scrip, and foreign currencies.

The title and cover of the The Last Weekend: A Novel of Zombies, Booze, and Power Tools may lead you to believe this is a humorous horror novel—and it does have quite a bit of wry humor throughout—but I was surprised at how literary Mamatas’ latest is. Yes, there are zombies and killings and blood flying around, but believe it or not, the horror takes a backseat to the real story, which is the tale of main character Billy Kostopolos, a displaced wannabe writer from the Midwest who has ended up in post-apocalyptic San Francisco, and how he comes to terms with the changing world and his place in it. Much of the story is Billy’s ramblings about his struggling life as a writer, his descent into booze and sex, and his overall dissatisfaction with life. But the horrific moments, when they come, are shocking, and I think that’s what I enjoyed about this story. Mamatas has imagined a world where the dead no longer stay dead, but the focus of the story isn’t on these zombies, but rather the living humans who are trying to eke out a life in this “new” reality.

Billy’s story wanders in non-linear fashion as he explains how he ended up in the Bay Area in California and took a job as a “driller,” someone who puts to rest the reanimates by drilling holes through their foreheads. Life in America has turned into a bleak landscape of looted stores and regular brown-outs, where the dead shamble aimlessly through the streets. There are all sorts of theories about why this is happening, but no one really knows for sure. Is it a plague? Or some scientific experiment gone wrong? Billy meets a girl named Alexa who is determined to discover the truth, and she enlists Billy to break into City Hall where she believes that secret is hidden.

And that is pretty much the entire plot of this novel, so for readers looking for down-and-dirty zombie action, with a strong plot and lots of tension, you’ll most likely be disappointed with this book. What Mamatas does do, though, and what endeared me to this story, is that his characters treat the horrific parts in such an offhand manner, that the (seriously) ridiculous idea of drilling a hole in a dead person’s forehead begins to seem normal, almost blasé. In fact, none of the characters seem very concerned about the reanimates, as if they were nothing more than stray dogs wandering the streets.

To keep the story moving, Billy narrates the past ten years or so of his life story, from his Midwestern upbringing with his Greek parents, to his time in Boston, where he doesn’t exactly get into college, but ends up taking writing classes all the same, until he finally lands in California after earning enough money for a plane ticket by ghost-writing a short story for a friend. This jumping around was somewhat haphazard and jarring at first, but once I got into the rhythm of what the author was doing, I just went with the flow. Billy’s narrative style is engaging and hard to resist, and even though I didn’t really like Billy very much, I sure did love Mamatas’ writing!

And with that, let’s talk about the characters, Billy in particular. In a world where society is falling apart, there are an amazing amount of bars and restaurants still open and doing a brisk business, and Billy’s been to every one of them. Billy is the ultimate slacker: he drinks like a fish, sleeps with as many women as will let him, all while convincing himself that his one shot at being a writer has come and gone (he once sold a short story to an underground zine for fifty dollars). Nevertheless, he carries a pad of paper with him in case the muse decides to strike. He’s got a fairly low opinion of himself, which makes him a pathetic sort of guy. But he does take pride in his job as a driller, as morbid as that sounds, so I guess you have to give him credit for that.

Mamatas lulls his readers into dropping their guard, and that's when you'll need to expect sudden bursts of gruesomeness. The undead aren't the sort to attack the living and try to eat them, it's the living that you need to watch out for. Armed with his trusty drill, Billy is responsible for much of the violence, although he's just doing his job, folks! Several failed attempts at killing the zombies turn wickedly horrific, but the real horror, as I mentioned before, is how normal it all seems to these characters. Indeed the world has changed.

I guess the bottom line is this: if you're willing to try a different sort of zombie story, you need to take a chance on this book. Mamatas has another new book coming out later this year (I Am Providence), and despite my middling rating, I am really looking forward to reading more of this very talented author.

Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy. Above quote was taken from an uncorrected proof and may differ in the final version of the book.This review originally appeared on Books, Bones & Buffy

[Brian Keene · Rating 5 out of 5]

I raved about Nick Mamatas’s THE LAST WEEKEND a year ago, when it was only available as a signed, limited edition hardcover. Now it’s available in paperback and Kindle. Like Bryan Smith’s SLOWLY WE ROT, Nick’s new book is a zombie novel that’s not about zombies. Instead, it uses that tired old trope as a backdrop for something more. In Smith’s case, that was an examination of social anxiety, loneliness, alcoholism, and insanity. In the case of THE LAST WEEKEND, alcoholism and social anxiety are once again present, but so is an examination of labor and employment, conspiracy theories, prepper culture, city government, revolutionaries, and the starving artist. It’s funny, it’s frightening, and it’s got mad, mad heart.

[Shannon Flowers · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Last Weekend is not your typical zombie apocalypse novel. It takes zombie literature to a whole new level. Unfortunately the book adds a sort of cerebral tone that isn’t what typical readers of zombie fiction are used to. It’s true with most zombie stories that the focus isn’t on the zombies but on the survivors (i.e. Walking Dead). The Last Weekend is no exception.

The story follows Vasilis “Billy” Kostopolis, who is currently trying his post apocalyptic trade as a “driller”, a person who destroys the brain of a recently deceased person to make sure they don’t come back as a revenant. He’s also a writer, in fact he’s had a published story. Sadly, only one. When he’s not drilling, Billy spends his time drinking…a lot. He also goes through women like they’re his next drink. Billy stumbles upon a conspiracy about the revenants and the city he lives in, San Francisco.

The Last Weekend is told from Billy’s first person voice, which is educated, almost to a fault. He tries too hard to add English Major material into every conversation he has with what’s left of San Francisco’s populace. It’s intriguing that author Mamatas paints Billy as a not quite successful Ernest Hemingway figure. It’s a novel from a writer about a writer and can get at times get too “meta”. I went to college, but wasn’t an English major, so I didn’t quite understand a lot of Billy’s references. I’m not sure if that was Mamatas’ point or if I was supposed to get it. There’s humor in the book, but a kind of dry wit, that became dour as the story went on.

This is definitely not a casual read. It’s only 224 pages, but seems to take more brain power than a typical zombie book. Again, maybe that was the point. If you’re a zombie fiction fanatic and love tragic stories, The Last Weekend might be for you. I feel like Thunder, a character in the book:

“I mean, it’s well-written
and all. Very English major-y, in a way. Experimental. But, you
know…”
“I know…”
“It’s not…”
“Leisure reading?” I said.
“Right, it’s not leisure reading.”

[Dominique Lamssies · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a zombie book in the same way The Historian is a vampire book: These supernatural creatures do exist within the scope of the story, but are on the periphery while the main character fixates on the past.

It didn't take long for Billy, the main character, to vault himself into the lofty echelons of characters I desperately want to punch in the face. And it was non-stop. There was never a moment in this book where I didn't want to give this guy a beat down. I don't believe this is bad writing, I can't say for sure, but I think Mamatas intended this character to be distasteful, his jerk-ness is just too consistent for it to be an accident.

But having a really horrible human being who knows he's a horrible human being sit around and ruminate on how he became a horrible human being and then look out the window and see some zombies is not my idea of a good time.

There is no real plot in this book, and the only real character is Billy. Everyone else who pops up and actually makes things happen gets no attention and aren't there for any reason except to give Billy someone to have sex with and/or hate for no reason. These are the characters that attempt to make a plot happen, but when some plot does actually happen, it's super anti-climactic. Since Billy is so fond of quoting other writers to sound smart, I will here as well; any plot ends "not with a bang, but with a whimper."

There are some people who want horror novels that aren't traditional horror novels. They want their MFA egos stroked while they read a book that has a monster they don't actually like so they can say they read a book about that monster. This is a good book for them.

For me, well, there's a great quote from the actual book that sums up my own feelings about it: "I mean, it's well-written and all. Very English major-y, in a way. Experimental. But, you know..."

... I wanted zombies eating people's faces. So this book was not so much for me.

[Stephanie Griffin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is crap! Don’t buy it, borrow it or read it. A waste of time!

[Osvaldo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not sure what to rate this book.

It really isn’t a zombie book at all, at least in the typical sense of zombies as allegory for mindless late-capitalist consumption or in terms the influence of imperialism that leads to waves of immigration back to the source of the colonial power that made wherever your people came from a potential shithole. No, this book is about writing. It is also about drinking, but mostly in terms of the conflation of habitual heavy drinking and the ability to write transgressively—kind of like how the oft-referenced Bukowski did, or tried to do…or like Henry Miller, who did his share of drinking, but whose real drug of choice was women. Transgression repeated becomes cliché. Cliché ambles on undying. The book’s meditation on bad writing and painful college writing workshops makes me wonder if Mamatas decided to use this project as a form of catharsis, to work into his novel the kinds of shit stories and doubtful impetus for writing that he no doubt is very familiar with through his work as a teacher and editor (all you need to do is follow him on Twitter or LiveJournal to get a sense of his scathing outlook). The Last Weekend is strongest when this is the material it has to work with. When writing about bad writing, Mamatas' own writing shines. In other words, the book is most interesting in the time before the coming of the zombie apocalypse. Then again, without the framework of spending the end of the world drinking, writing (shit no one will probably ever read) in the Bay Area, the book might be just another collegiate narrative with the typical love triangle of embittered working-class kid, his social-climbing love interest, and the privileged blue-blood New England dipshit.

Ultimately, like most of Mamatas’ books that I’ve read (and I’ve read a handful), the trappings of genre mostly serve to underscore the futility and arrogance of looking for discrete underlying systems to explain human behavior and the contours of history and social institutions. Conspiracies, magic, political philosophies, the dead rising from their graves, are all ways to organize ideas about what the fuck is going on. But, even if you find a secret film in a City Hall sub-basement or an occult cabal in a Long Island basement punk rock party, whatever sense emerges from discovery is a retroactive repositioning to make it match what we think we already know or what we imagine we’ve been kept from knowing. Even the desire to know more feels like it has already been shaped by social forces, market forces, whatever mix of fucking over-determined forces that we call a self.

The book (like Mamatas’ other books) does not so much resolve as much as it peters out, emulating the building tension and sudden spurt of action that serves as climax of plot-driven books, but almost as if going through the motions, as if the structures of plot are the ghostly wisps of human consciousness in the zombie brain.

I am going to rate it four-stars, because I think more people should read his work and I want to give it more visibility, but a more honest and granular rating with be three-and-a-half (as if star ratings weren’t just another form of meaningless organizational bullshit).

[L.A. Fields · Rating 5 out of 5]

How to Successfully Read The Last Weekend:

- First read The Lost Weekend by Charles Jackson (or see the movie if you're just a tourist about it), and anything else you can think of written about writers and drunks (especially when they are authored by drunken writers--Hemingway, Bukowski, you know the drill), and then congratulate yourself the whole time just like the protagonist for knowing so much more than will ever be appreciated by the mind-dead zombies of the world.

- Have a good idea of just how awful men can be in an apocalyptic scenario, then compare that marauding rapist to Billy the Greek over here, and then don't even pretend you wouldn't be happy to know this drunken dork at the end of the world (the end of America, actually—the world’s probably better off after the US gets wiped out).

- Get the concept of zombies but don't be married to any preconceived notions about how they should emotionally impact the living (like there's a right way to deal with zombies? Doubt it).

- Know that government jobs without regulation or rigor will totally survive any mass-scale disaster (like roaches, bureaucracies will survive unchanged), and get that people who do the most vital jobs are often the least vital living (next step down is a reanimated corpse).

- Know anything about California demographics, stereotypes, and neighborhoods, or at least try to enjoy the breeze of jokes flying over your head (if you're like the protagonist you'll be from a flyover state anyway, and pretty used to that feeling).

- Love gender equality enough to appreciate that men and women alike will all be selfish, reckless, and bat-crap crazy if they’re the kind of outlier who can survive a sudden zombie awakening.

- Want to read a zombie book for those who are not and don't even care to be heroes, know that tools are better than guns even when neither one is likely to save you, and trust that you'll like this book if you want to.

[Lou Jacobs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having never read Nick Mamatas before I really didn't know what to expect. I enjoyed this book , but it was not what I expected. This is not a Zombie Apocalypse novel ... that was the premise, but actually was just a necessary background that allowed Mamatas to flex his literary muscle . I really appreciated his continual patter of dark humor ... this is used in his quest to comment on the absurdities of the human condition . He nicely waxes poetically and with humor on the philosophy of life. The main protagonist provides a first person narrative of his failed life as a writer and his ambition to succeed and escape from his mid-west roots. However, his life plods on with his encounters with those around him within the context of living a "life" amongst the walking dead or reanimates .... his new source of revenue provided by trepanning holes in their foreheads. If your looking for a complex plotted adventure ... this is not it. Mamatas' extensive and successful use of Black Humor is the selling point in this "fun read"

[Jack Skillingstead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not bad. But would it have killed Mamatas to throw in a Greek fisherman's cap?

[Mike Kazmierczak · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read much by Mamatas but what I have read has been interesting. Stuff that has made me think and examine life. There were parts of the book where I felt that if I wanted the full effect, I would need to sit and analyze different elements. The kind of writing that just screams "dissect my symbolism!"

The story here focuses on Billy as he tries to survive a post-apocalyptic but still functioning world. Zombies have disrupted the United Stated but not destroyed it. City government is still functioning and hiring drillers to finish any zombies that appear, a job for which Billy is newly hired. We follow Billy as he performs and excels at his job but then at the same time suffers with the other aspects of life: relationships and his heart's desire of being a writer.

There are a lot of elements to Billy's life that readers get to consider: conspiracy theories, letting the world impact your life, the starving artist. I found the novel fit into a Venn Diagram of Enjoyment, Literature, and Cliche. The starving artist Cliche became a bit much and was borderline annoying before I found myself back in Enjoyment which would morph into Literature. Some of the symbolic portions left me realizing there was more depth to the novel than expected; other portions had me knowing that something was there but that I was missing something. Overall I enjoyed the book and look forward to reading more stuff by Mamatas. At the same time, I understand many of the more frustrated reviews.

[David Watkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

There may be spoilers lurking in this review....

This is a difficult book to review, as I really liked a lot of it. It reads like Charles Bukowski has tried to write a zombie book and for the most part succeeds. It is really well written, but the main problem is the protagonist is essentially a dick. I really wanted him to get killed but as its written in the first person you can guess how that goes. I really liked all the parts set in the apocolypse, but the sections detailing life before hand were a little harder going.

I'm still undecided as to whether I would recommend this book, but I would read another by Nick Mamatas as I think he's a talented guy. However, if you're expecting lots of zombie action with brains splatting all over the place then you are going to be sorely disappointed.

[Horror DNA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite what you’ll hear from reviewers and excited readers in the next few weeks, Nick Mamatas has not reinvented the zombie novel with The Last Weekend; he has created a new subgenre that brings together the best elements of horror, noir, and literary fiction while simultaneously poking fun at those genres. As if that wasn’t enough, the novel also offers a narrative that’s as much about zombies as it is about exploring a deeply flawed character and the way society changed/stayed the same after the apocalypse.

You can read Gabino's full review at Horror DNA by clicking here.

[Severina · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is presumably about a zombie uprising that oddly stops at America's borders and a mystery that may be hidden in San Francisco City Hall. What it's really about is the obnoxious navel-gazing of a sexist, possibly homophobic, alcoholic creepster who repeatedly tells us how much he hates his life and contemplates suicide yet also enjoys showing off by quoting his favourite novels and can't get over the one woman that he had sex with for 3 months years ago. Maybe I could put with him if the novel had a plot, but nope. It's all mostly forgotten until the very end of the novel, when there's a very half-assed conclusion. That's a couple of hours I'm never getting back.

[Harry Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A zombie book not really about Zombies. The Zombies are backstage to the story about a jerk of a guy who is a real alcoholic. He has taken a job as a Zombie killer for the city. He meets a couple of crazy women who see past his current problems all while he is sweating the girl he can't have. Some funny stuff and some cringe worthy moments made it and ok book. Not really for Zombie fans, nor drama fans. I guess if you like books about alcoholic writers who love quoting books, and whom are on a downward spiral (with some graphic Zombie killing thrown in), look no further this is the book for you!

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably Mamatas's most accessible novel (at least of those I've read), in that the protagonist slots into a recognized archetype: the self-destructive drunk. Also one of the most unromantic views of apocalypse I've ever read. Most writers and many readers think that a level of gritty savageness saves their apocalypses from being romantic, but even after the power grid fails, they're still looking for heroes and villains and the redemptive arc and moral uplift. Even THE ROAD has good guys. Not so the Bay Area and its revenants.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this story, a lot. It was a great twist on the “usual” zombie sort. The protagonist is not all that likable, going through life without a whole lot of effort, except in his drinking, where he truly excels. His girlfriends are not that much better, with one turning into a true killer, and the other baiting him with another man. The use of power tools (battery powered drill) as the weapon of choice against the undead was just icing on the cake. Although the payoff at the end did not wholly ring true, it was good enough for our hero Billy to survive another day. (No spoilers!)

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Drivingly, punishingly bleak. I think Mamatas' work normally does a better job of balancing that with a certain, idk, generosity toward his deeply flawed characters. but here we're reading the life audit of a deeply depressed alcoholic. the narrator wants to show off for you, show you that he's clever, but he also hates himself for doing so. more like 3.5 stars, honestly

[Elizabeth Wheeler · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thinkers zombie apocalypse.

Refreshing in a genre that gets old quick. I enjoyed the writing style (first person I think). The characters were well developed and the author deftly avoided the clichés of other zombies novels but still had plenty of zombie killing grisly action to satisfy.

[Sabroch Grey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The books adds cerebral tone with a a variety of Power Tools. A must read.

[Paul Cutting · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nick Mamatas has come up with a great idea: write a Bukowski/Fante styled fiction against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse. Maybe he's coined a new pissed up, narrow interest genre. As a fan of both book styles, I approached 'The Last Weekend' with high hopes.

The book strays from its marketing sub-title, "A novel of zombies, booze and power tools" and spends the majority of its 200 plus pages tumbling around the main character's head like a washing ball in a lonely drum on a slow spin cycle. There's some great writing here (I'll definitely be reading more from Nick Mamatas), and some fun anecdote-styled non sequiturs, but the main character lacks the charm and straight ahead tone of his literary heroes to carry off the thin plot.

'The Last Weekend' is a brave experiment and delivers plenty to admire, but the definitive 'Bukowski meets Zombies' book remains to be written.

[David Rossetti · Rating 4 out of 5]

The undead are mostly unnecessary in this zombie novel, serving only to set a slightly more desolate locale for the main character to engage in drunken self-loathing punctuated by occasional gorgeous bursts of insight. Imagine Holden Caulfield as a slightly older, more bitter, second-generation Greek alcoholic walking the streets of post-zombie apocalypse San Francisco with a drill in his hand and ennui in his heart and, well, it's a lousy comparison but it's the best I can do. If you're already fan of Mamatas's wit and observations you'll enjoy this. If you're looking for headshots and chainsaws and fountains of brain, pick it up anyway; you're long overdue to read some adult literature.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nick Mamatas has mastered the art of writing characters who are real assholes, yet you still find yourself rooting for them, desperately hoping they get their shit together before the end of the book. This is a thinking man's Zombie Apocalypse Novel, more thought-provoking than gorge-rising. It's tempting to want to read a wider cultural commentary into the narrative; your mileage will certainly vary in this respect. The Last Weekend is well crafted with an honest, nearly unreliable, POV voice, and a penchant for gazing at the subject matter until it becomes creepy and uncomfortable.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

A zombie thriller with literary aspirations that doesn't quite make it on either front. You can drop references to Bukowski and Shakespeare all you want, but a meandering plot full of giant inconsistencies and an ending that answers almost none of the questions brought up along the way (what caused the zombie plague? Why does it only affect America?) is going to fall short no matter how artfully you try to tell it. Anyone looking for a good zombie book would be much better off with Bob Fingerman's "Pariah."

[Silvia Moreno-Garcia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zombies versus alcoholic writer. The novel has more in common with Corey Redekop’s Husk than Night of the Living Dead. Not that there are no gross moments, since the protagonist, Vasilis Kostopolos, works as a “driller,” trepanning zombies in San Francisco. But this is not really a zombie book in the mold of most survivalist zombie fare. Lots of literary and pop culture references as might be expected from Mamatas.

Full review: http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/blo...