Pulp of the Week - Death Troopers

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Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber

Death Troopers is the first Star War novel I was drawn to since Timothy Zahn's original Thrawn Trilogy. Zombies in the Star Wars Universe? I'm in. As it happens, this book takes place shortly before the events of A New Hope.

Schreiber's novel follows two teen-age brothers, Kale and Trig Longo, survivors and grifters that are prisoners aboard the Imperial Prison Barge, Purge. They are headed for some remote prison planet. Their father died earlier in the journey. The boys survive alone.

When the huge engines come to a stop, the routine is broken, and Zahara Cody, the chief medical officer of the ship, has no idea how important her role is about to become. The ship drops out of hyperspace and needs repairs. Fortunately, there is an Imperial Star Destroyer in range. The Purge docks with it and that's when the trouble starts. Zombies. Lots of them.

Somehow Zahara and the Longo brothers get to the Star Destroyer and find help from an unlikely source, although one that has been known to have to deal with Imperial entanglements.

There is a lot of death, carnage and gore with a shipload of Imperial Storm Troopers and the zombie virus spreading fast. Can the Longo boys escape the duel ship death trap and the Death Troopers?
That would be telling.

I will say that the novel is full of surprises and that the writer, Joe Schreiber, keeps the pace deadly and the tension relentless. I would recommend this book to Star Wars fans, zombie fans, and horror fans. There. Did I leave anybody out?

I'll give Death Troopers and 8.5 out of 10.