Boo-yah, baby!

Well, I gotta say, while I'm sure the rug will soon be yanked out from under me, I'm really enjoying the reviews for Husk thus far.

I've already listed a few (here), but there's a few more I'd like to draw your attention to:

First, the venerable American publication BookList (which many libraries and such consult for ideas on orders), gave me this sterling nugget of awesome:

Redekop follows up his 2007 debut, the very funky Shelf Monkey, with the story of Sheldon Funk, a struggling actor, who wakes up during his own autopsy. Undead but still functional, Funk looks for a way to keep himself out of the wrong people’s hands, land a plum acting job, and (eventually) weather the storm of zombie superstardom before decomposition inevitably gets the best of him. Featuring Funk’s ambitious agent and an unsavory doctor who finds gruesomely clever ways to keep Sheldon’s body from falling apart too quickly, the story is a lesson in practical zombieing: what to do when you become a member of the walking dead, how to pass yourself off as (relatively) normal, how to learn to speak and walk again, and how to deal with your new meatcentric dietary requirements. Very funny and full of nifty surprises, the story has a big heart, too, presenting Sheldon as an ordinary fella trying to come to terms with his extraordinary new situation. The ending is appropriate and packs a serious emotional wallop. Highly recommendable—perhaps to more than zombie geeks.

And now, on the eve of actual publication (October 1!), The Toronto Star, which had already labelled Husk as one of their Top 20 Fall Reads of 2012, weighs in with a full review that completely and utterly gets me:

There's a point near the end of Husk where the narrator, long dead and without much of a body left to drag around, decides to embrace his "pop culture heritage" and start acting more like a traditional zombie...That heritage isn't essential to enjoying Corey Redekop’s book, his second novel, but some background helps...Redekop tosses so much into this zombie stew that instead of wearing out his premise quickly it almost seems as though he needs a bigger pot. By the time we get to the end, which involves a reclusive billionaire's bid for immortality and an apocalypse that stirs together pages torn from Philip K. Dick and H. P. Lovecraft, one feels there's no more ground to cover. Zombiedom's entire pop culture heritage has been thrown against the wall in bleeding chunks, where much of it sticks.

Feeling pretty warm in the belly right now. Hmmmm. Warm.