The Cold Ones

by Elizabeth Donald

Elizabeth Donald's The Cold Ones stands out from the crowd. Zombie stories are easy. Good zombie stories are more challenging and great ones, well, those are damned hard to find. The good news is you don't have to look any further than The Cold Ones to find one of the greats. A damned fine read and highly recommended.

-- James A. Moore, author of Deeper and Blood Red

Genres: Horror

56 pages, ebook

First published October 1, 2009

About the author

Elizabeth Donald is a dark fiction writer fond of things that go chomp in the night. She is author of the Blackfire urban fantasy series and Nocturne vampire mystery series, as well as other novels, novellas and stories in the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres. She is a three-time winner of the Darrell Award for speculative fiction and finalist for the Prism, Imadjinn and Knost awards, and more recently received the Mimi Zanger Award for fiction. She is the founder of the Literary Underworld small-press cooperative; an award-winning journalist and essayist with more than 25 years in journalism; a nature and art photographer; freelance editor and writing coach. She holds a masters degree in media studies and MFA in creative writing from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and teaches journalism and English composition at several St. Louis colleges. She serves as president of the St. Louis Society of Professional Journalists and vice president of the AWP Adjunct Writers Caucus, and is a member of the national SPJ Ethics Committee, Association of Writers and Writing Programs, Authors Against Book Bans, Authors Guild, and more writing and trade organizations than is healthy. She lives with her family in a haunted house in Edwardsville, Illinois. In her spare time, she has no spare time. 

Reviews

[Eric Asher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I go in to most zombie books expecting “just another zombie book.” I happen to love zombie books, but here there is a unique twist, a competent villain, and I have almost zero complaints. Once a redcap showed up, I was pretty sure The Cold Ones was going to be different. I enjoyed the military backgrounds of the characters and their ability to think outside the box. My complaints are very minor. The flashbacks are written in italics, which can be uncomfortable in long passages. I felt the price was a little high for a novella, but it is so worth it. It’s the perfect lead-in to Donald’s follow-up, Blackfire.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Cold Ones is a novelette by award winning author Elizabeth Donald. In Cold Ones, we meet Sarah Harvey, small-town bookstore owner with a secret: she’s not really a bookstore owner. It’s her cover; she’s part of a secret organization doing who knows what in this small coastal town. At least one other shop owner is another member of her team; their jobs are to keep an eye on the town and cover the rest of the team. The story begins with a scream as someone is attacked in the street by what turns out to be a quick, ferocious, zombie-like man, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, it represents only the beginnings of the trouble ahead…

The Cold Ones is a well-crafted tale; I was instantly sucked in and stayed up too late reading it. Ms. Donald does a very good job making her characters believable while avoiding most cliches found in supernatural fiction these days. This team of covert operatives is skilled and fairly bad-assed, but they are also fallible – they screw up occasionally and sometimes make poor choices.

The rest of this review can be found at FlamesRising.com .

[Byron 'Giggsy' Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

this just didn't capture me at all, I didn't like the flow of it, felt it jumped around too much. But I should note that it has had good reviews prior to me. If you like fast paced action, this may be a good choice. I don't think this work totally comes together for Elizabeth Donald, but its obvious there is some underlying talent for this author

[Rachel Brune · Rating 5 out of 5]

I pretty much love everything about this novella. The zombies, the other creatures, the main character...although I wouldn't have guessed there were enough characters left to make a sequel. The sequel, however, is what I'm about to start. I am glad the novella as a form is coming back; this is a perfect reason why.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine if zombies were fast instead of slow. Imagine if they could still think, but were just insane. Imagine if the military got ahold of one to experiment on.

Then read this book.