This is another solid Broeck Steadman cover. Gets the point across very easily that we have pets coming back from the dead with their glowing red eyes. I love the fully skeletal dog in the back and the deep red sky. I will say I have some issues. The cover does feel very cramped with less of a chance to do much with the art. I also, I dunno, wish the pets looked more zombie-like with rotting flesh and whatnot. But maybe that was verboten from Troll so one skeleton dog and that's all you get. Still it's an enticing cover and does what it needs to sell you on a book about pet zombies.
David Brewster and his friend Eddie Deegan are in a bit of a pickle. Their science project is pretty much dead. They were supposed to bring a vine, a flower, and a fungus, but all that's still alive is their vine, Angelica Verdiana, which sounds like an Angela Anaconda ripoff. However, the vine's not doing so well either, with it starting to wither and bugs are just up and eating its leaves. They then get attacked by a vampire! No, wait, it's just David's older sister Charley, who is full on goth. Dressed in all black, loving to talk about morbid stuff. And she loves nothing more morbid than David's failure, especially with how they bungled this science project and how that means David and Eddie will wind up in summer school. Also she has a dead myna bird in her room that she calls Hitch. She mentions that the spirit of Hitch is still in the cage, and that he leaves "spirit droppings", which David is gullible enough to check before he almost falls off a chair. I mean, the kid fumbled the bag on plant care so it makes sense he'd be so easy to fool.
David and Eddie continue to work on their project when they turn on the TV to watch a zombie movie on the Monster Channel. Oh, so I can connect this to Goosebumps then, cool. They then see a commercial selling a product called "Miracle Life", which guarantees to bring any dead plant back to life. The boys watch as the pitchman use some of the concoction onto a plant which revitalizes itself. David is excited, but Eddie thinks it must be a scam. What's even stranger is the Monster Channel is commercial free, so the sudden addition of a commercial for the product the boys could use right at this very moment seems suspect. After being attacked by a bug again, which they then kill and bury in the plant pot as fertilizer, the boys decide to head out to the bad part of town to search for the Miracle Life store, which they soon find. It's old and seemingly deserted, but they soon find the man from the commercial inside, dressed in a tuxedo, with a very, very cold handshake and a mark on his neck like someone, or something took a hunk of flesh off. I mean obvious twist is obvious, but we're still early in the book.
He introduces himself as Frederick Von Mortmeister and gives the boys some of the Miracle Life formula, then bites off a piece of thumbnail which then comes to life and starts dancing with other pieces of fingernail. Wait what? David sees it, but Eddie doesn't, so David just looks crazy which, I mean, if you started talking about dancing fingernails then yeah. But these are kids who bought a strange puke-looking fertilizer from a strange, most definitely dead man, so Eddie shouldn't throw stones at his own glass house. They use the Miracle Life on the vine, fungus and flower and sure enough the plants come back to life. However, the plants begin to grow wildly, with Angelica destroying one of David's shelves. They also smell like death, meaning the boys have to take them outside. David thinks they should put the plants by the fence of the Ellises, the family next door that they hate because they called the cops on David's dad once for using a stereo outside and also their pets are also always attacking them. I mean, in fairness, I could see them being annoyed by someone pumping out the jams in the middle of the day, but NARCing is far worse.
David and Eddie head to David's room to play video games (which the book calls the carts "tapes". What is it, a fucking Commodore 64?). David goes to put a cartridge in, but inside the system is the bug that bit them earlier. The one that they for sure killed and buried. They kill it again, only it comes back to life, starts growing larger and hairier. The bug runs off under David's bed. His parents show up and the kids try to explain what's going on, but to be fair I don't think even they fully grasp what's going on. So I can't fully call this a "Because Goosebumps Parents" moment when they don't believe them. But because his parents don't buy the undead bug, David comes up with a stupid plan. That plan being to bring Charley's bird Hitch back to life (which has since been buried) from the pet cemetery in their yard. That's sure to do it. The boy decide to camp out for the night, while also taking some Miracle Life for the plants. However, David trips on a tree root and spills the Miracle Life, causing the grass to grow two-feet long, make a bunch of worms and slugs super aggressive, oh, and more pressing, it brought David's dead cat, the "couldn't be arsed to come up with a name for the cat, so Tabby", back to life, and that cat's pissed too.
Tabby scratches David, then starts to lick his hand, which the boys soon discover is the cat licking the blood because, again, zombie. Eddie scares Tabby, sending the dead cat running. Now, logical people would stop using the Miracle Life formula right then and there. David has a cashew brain, so of course he adds more Miracle Life to the graves of his other dead pets, Bullet the Turtle and Dershowitz the Snake. Dershowitz? Does David love him some corrupt US Lawyers? Also his pet hamster Fred, which only has three legs now because the other was eaten by maggots I guess. Bullet also spits black pus, while Dershowitz is the size of a boa constrictor. Also there's Rover and Spot, a pair of dead tarantulas, because I guess this family just had a shit ton of dead pets. Also Hitch rises, now the size of a raven with eagle claws. Also the bird can talk complete human sentences. I don't know if this book is insane in a good way or a bad way yet, but it's definitely something alright.
Hitch attacks the boys, then has a swarm of dead bees attack the boys, but stops them when the boys plead. He then mentions that he has a friend on the other side just waiting to meet David and Eddie. That being Rex, a dog that's been buried for over eighty years. The boys make a run for it with Hitch taunting them. That night, David and Eddie decide to search for Mortmeister and tell them what's going on with the Miracle Life and the undead pets and all. However, when they arrive at the store, they see that it's actually Farkas' Funeral Home, owned by a Fester Farkas, who tells the boys that Frederick Von Mortmeister's been dead for over a week now. Mortmeister was a botanist, who created the Miracle Life formula. In his will, he stated that he wanted to be buried with his Miracle Life formula, as he felt it worked on more than just plants. The boys then stop at a taxidermy store and talk with the taxidermist. After the boys get scared by the sounds of a dead mandrill burping and explaining that this is a natural thing the body can do while dead, the taxidermist tells the boys about a formula called Preserve-X, which preserves animals in their dead form. He doesn't give them the formula because, duh, you aren't just giving a pair of kids a deadly poison.
David and Eddie get attacked by Hitch again who tell them that because Charley squeezed him to death with a big hug, he's sent Dershowitz the snake to squeeze Charley to death. The boys run back to David's house where his mom's dealing with the spiders, while his dad is almost killed by Fred and Tabby who set a rake under his hammock and chew the ropes off. But despite this wicked plan, they don't succeed in impaling him, just really hurting him. They've been re-alive for barely a day, they're learning. The boys then find Charley indeed coiled by Dershowitz. They manage to stab the snake with a pen which frees Charley, all while Hitch shows up to mock them some more and leaves. Also Charley passes out, wakes up, thinks that David and Eddie put the snake in her room, and that the bird wasn't Hitch and wasn't talking. She then leaves to tell on them. Well, so much for her being a character I guess. After she leaves, Hitch shows up again and taunts them some more, promising that in the next 24 hours, all of the undead animals will be back to life.
The boys then see the dead bees heading to the park, and Tabby about to attack a baby. The kids save the baby, but get yelled at for it. And I'm just looking at the page count at this point because I'm losing my interest in this one, not gonna lie. The boys then almost get attacked by Tabby and Rex, when Hitch shows up again to taunt, saying that later tonight, their big friends will show up. In my head I went "Oh damn, dinosaurs", then realized "Oh, the taxidermy shop." I mean dinosaurs would have been a cooler finale. The kids enter the taxidermy shop later in the night, which is open because nobody in these books know how to use a lock. Sure enough, the animals are coming back to life. But all it takes is splashing the Preserve-X on them to kill them once more, including Hitch. So it's all over now, right? Oh right, one more thing...
The boys make their leave, but get caught by Mortmeister, who says that he's hungry. But they then suddenly hear an explosion from the taxidermy shop. See, in the battle with the pets, the Miracle Life spilled under the floorboards, and this whole area used to be a potter's field, meaning that it was a former cemetery. Mortmeister laughs and welcomes the boys to Zombieville, which, not gonna lie, more badass title than what this one was.
I think this book is decent in places, but definitely suffers a lot from the middle. Namely the reasoning for even bringing the dead pets to life in the first place. I like the idea of the Miracle Life, how it can bring the dead back to life, only more evil. I never read the Goosebumps books back in the day, so this was what I thought Monster Blood was initially. A slime that turned things monstrous. Instead it was just "blob that makes things giant", which was a neat idea too. I just wish that the point A to point B of how we got to the undead pets was better. David just deciding to be stupid and not do much... EXCEPT PLAY GOD! Or, I dunno, just be a really dumb kid who thinks that bringing dead pets back to life would explain to his parents why a bug he killed didn't stay dead and might have been turning into a Tribble. And the second half of the book has some cool scenes with the dead pets, but also a bunch of milling about and a really annoying bird who I guess needed to talk because we needed the pet zombies to have a really elaborate plan.
David and Eddie are okay protagonists. David is a moron, especially since, again, he just thought bringing dead pets to life was a smart idea. Charley, god I wish she was a character in this. You give her the goth angle and all, and we get the big scene where she gets saved, and then... nothing. I think that was the moment of the book where I may have mentally checked out. Like, you have that personal history with Charley and Hitch. He was her pet after all, and you do nothing with that? You just have her think David somehow got a boa constrictor to try to murder her? That might be the biggest bag fumble for a character I've dealt with in some time. Hitch is okay as a villain, but again is mostly here for exposition and taunting until the super rushed finale. I just really don't get why we needed Hitch as the main villain when we set Mortmeister up as being the one behind all of this. To the point that him being saved for the twist feels like a waste.
I have to be honest. This one feels like a book that does have some great action moments and some decent horror with the concept of the dead animals, but fails on putting it into a cohesive package that I enjoyed. Like, have Hitch not be the main villain, have Charley be a character, involve Mortmeister more, have there be more interesting action scenes with the dead pets, have a finale that doesn't feel
rushed to death and you might have a solid book here. What we get ultimately leads to my least favorite Deadtime Stories book so far. One with a light recommend at the very best. You might like it more than I did, but this one did not gel with me at all. A shame. Or, better yet, read Billy Baker's Dog Won't Stay Buried instead. That one was so much better. Night of the Pet Zombies gets a C+.
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