By Dustin Cabeal
After asking the question of “Is my brother a zombie?” for thirty-five pages, the story answers the question in two short pages. Leaving me the review to wonder if we really needed thirty-five pages to answer that question. I’m of the opinion of no… no we didn’t.
Aside from the asinine length of the story there is the issue of the artwork. I don’t think there’s a single aspect of the art that’s not a pre-rendered asset. Now I can’t say for 100% certainty that it’s a program with pre-rendered assets, but I’m pretty damn confident that most will agree when they look at the first page of the book. Because if it’s not pre-rendered art being moved around then the creator doesn’t understand angles, shadowing, and spacing. The wall perspective is going one direction, the bed is going in same direction to the left, but not the right. The nightstand dresser is just floating out away from the wall going in an entirely different perspective and then the alarm clock sitting on the dresser… is also facing a different perspective. The perspective is all completely different just within this one room.
The interesting part is that I’m reading this digitally and so I can flip through it quickly with a mouse. It’s damn near a frame-by-frame animation as the main character slowly moves their eyes and arm. Nothing else moves. Nothing else shifts. Not the coloring, not the shadowing, not the linework. Then we’re introduced to another bed in the room. Suddenly the same space is crammed tight with a second bed, but that bed constantly disappears when we return to the original scene with the bed. I can understand the bed not being there until it appears in the story, but it shouldn’t disappear after being introduced. There is not a single aspect of the artwork that is enjoyable or even helps the story. There is also the glaring inconsistency in the setting. The story begins with stars and a moon in the sky, but then when it journeys outside of the room it appears to be daytime. It flips back and forth which is confusing. Which is it? I know the answer, but the art should have been in line with the story and it’s not. It is unfortunately generic in every sense of the word.
Going back to the thirty-seven-page story, not once does it do a convincing job of making the reader think that the brother is a zombie. I’m not even convinced that the main character knows what a zombie is, and if he was sleeping next to one all night, I’d hope he’d be more cautious. The story tries some fart humor, but then decided to describe the fart like a camel’s bad breath. I think most people have smelled stinky breath and I think most everyone has smelled a fart. I don’t think anyone would rather smell a fart over stinky breath but that’s the comparison that the author inadvertently makes. There’s also the strange choice of writing “Fart” on the fart cloud, while also writing “they heard a very loud fart” on the same page. It’s fart overkill. Maybe if it was in a different font, or the cloud was in the shape of the fart, but then they couldn’t use that same pre-rendered asset for the camel’s breath that’s shown later.
Usually, I read kids’ books to my kids before reviewing them. Maybe my sons would have liked this story, but it’s not of a quality that I seek for my kids’ books. I like to give them stories with artwork that inspires their imaginations and helps tell the story visually for them. I like to give them stories that are either fun and entertaining for them to go through or so well-crafted that they want to revisit the story night after night. Is My Brother A Zombie did not do any of those things, which I think the author knows. That’s why a robot hunt was added to the book. To get the reader to engage more with the visuals of the story than the story itself. Is this book worth reading? No.
Written by Steven Stables