My review of Night of the Living Dead Christian by Matt Mikalatos

About the book:

What does a transformed life actually look like? 

In his follow-up to the critically acclaimed Imaginary Jesus, Matt Mikalatos tackles this question in an entertaining and thought-provoking way—with MONSTERS!!! While Christians claim to experience Christ’s resurrection power, we sometimes act like werewolves who can’t control our base desires. Or zombies, experiencing a resurrection that is 90 percent shambling death and 10 percent life. Or vampires, satiating ourselves at the expense of others. But through it all we long to stop being monsters and become truly human—the way Christ intended. We just can’t seem to figure out how.

Night of the Living Dead Christian is the story of Luther, a werewolf on the run, whose inner beast has driven him dangerously close to losing everything that matters. Desperate to conquer his dark side, Luther joins forces with Matt to find someone who can help. Yet their time is running out. A powerful and mysterious man is on their trail, determined to kill the wolf at all costs . . .

By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Night of the Living Dead Christian is a spiritual allegory that boldly explores the monstrous underpinnings of our nature and tackles head-on the question of how we can ever hope to become truly transformed.


My review:

This is definitely the oddest book I have ever read. Some parts were five star, some were three star, and some were lowers, so I decided to average it out. There is brilliant theology in this book, but the story is also insanely wacky and at times seemingly pointless. While quite a few scenes were so funny they made me laugh out loud (so I read them to my husband) other places were a tad dry, or overly silly.

I kept trying to see the spiritual allegory and I did catch it in a few places, but most of the story was plain confusing for me. There was a lot of action, hilarity, and stuff that was downright weird. As in beyond silly. But then the story would shift into some deep theology, and it almost felt bipolar to me. Odd, but that's the best way I can think of to describe it. Maybe if the transitions had been a bit smoother and not contrasted so much it would have worked more for me. Not sure. I could see the author was trying to make some good points, but they were muddied by the insanity of it all.

Tyndale House Publishers has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.