mythology Archives - Literary Harbinger

BOOK REVIEW

Book: DeathCon: A Zombie Story
Genre: Supernatural Zombie Horror
Author: Nzondi
Rating: 4.5/5
Reviewer: Stavyah Vatsarah

Nzondi’s DeathCon gives a quick twist to the familiar zombie story: its protagonist, Cozimel “Cozy” Coleman, is a necromancer for whom raising the dead is less an unspeakable horror than a job. Cozy and her friends run the Scream Teens, bringing back the dead so families can work out the practicalities of unfinished business. “We raised zombies so mourners could say goodbye one last time,” Cozy says, as if she were describing a normal service industry. This normalizing of necromancy sets up one of the most striking ideas in the novel: death can be scary, but in Cozy’s world it can also be commercial and emotional and bizarrely routine. Nzondi uses this unusual premise and blends zombie horror, supernatural fantasy, comedy, friendship, and adventure.

When Horror Is Not Pretend

That premise is all the more playful given the setting, as most of the early action takes place on board the Sea Queen during DeathCon 2025, a horror-themed cruise with costumes, music, performances, and people eager to be frightened. The same problem confronts Cozy and the reader: how to distinguish entertainment from danger as strange incidents start intruding upon the festivities. After witnessing a woman acting alarmingly, Cozy begins to wonder whether the ship has just hired her “to scare people.” Given the setting, with zombie nuns, werewolves, grim reapers, and other costumed characters, the confusion is totally believable. So Nzondi turns the very setting of the convention into a source of suspense.

That tension works particularly well because DeathCon isn’t simply relying on darkness to generate horror. The characters are surrounded by bright lights, loud music, flamboyant costumes, dancing, jokes, and references to pop culture, all against an increasingly uneasy atmosphere. Even the bar called Lipstick Zombies looks like a horror carnival with costumed patrons and zombie-themed staff. The contrast makes it easy to dismiss anything unusual as part of the spectacle, creating a natural build-up of unease. In the novel, uncertainty gradually leaks into a world where everyone is expecting scary things to be fake.

Cozy Coleman Raises the Ante

The novel’s best asset is Cozy herself, and her first-person narration gives DeathCon a loud, irreverent personality. She’s impulsive, funny, combative, compassionate, and self-aware enough to know she’s reckless, though she doesn’t always rein it in. Her introduction captures that combination perfectly: “Some girls talked too much, some stole boyfriends, but my vice was raising the dead.” The joke does more than set the tone; it shows how deeply Cozy considers the extraordinary ordinary. Even the explanatory sections are lively, driven by her colloquial narration, pop-culture references, jokes, and sudden observations.

But there is also an emotional counterpoint to Cozy’s bravado. Her humor and attitude coexist with moments of vulnerability, while her interactions with those around her show the importance of real human connection. Her friendships, in particular, give the story warmth without taking away from its irreverent energy. Cozy is also compassionate, unafraid to help others without expecting acclaim. These moments keep her from being just another wise-cracking supernatural heroine.

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Rewriting the Rules of the Undead

The worldbuilding is just as distinctive, as Nzondi deliberately subverts the traditional zombie mythos. Cozy rejects the cinematic notion of zombies smashing their way out of coffins and hunting living people outright, saying that “zombies weren’t savage killers.” Instead, the novel lays out rules for necromancy, protective circles, rituals, substances, spiritual forces, and the obligations of temporarily bringing the dead into contact with the living. These explanations provide an internal logic for its supernatural world, rather than treating magic as a solution without limits. The result is a version of the undead that feels familiar enough to recognize but different enough to remain interesting.

The mythology is also placed next to a very modern universe of social media, music, movies, video games, celebrity culture, and gadgets. References to African, Egyptian, Hawaiian, and other cultures and spirituality help build the supernatural framework. Cozy casually talks about everything from horror movies to cell phones. The combination fits a protagonist who herself lives in several overlapping worlds: ancient practices and modern adolescence, extraordinary experiences and ordinary insecurities, and death rituals and commercial entertainment. The novel therefore avoids depicting necromancy as something that exists only in a mysterious past. Instead, Nzondi invites readers to consider what happens when an ancient supernatural practice becomes a recognizable modern service.

Blood, Banter, Beating Heart

Stylistically, DeathCon favors speed over restraint. Conversations ricochet between jokes and moments of unease, and Cozy’s interior narration ensures scenes rarely stay solemn for long. Those who like energetic narrators will probably enjoy the immediacy, but if you like understated horror, you may find the slang and pop-culture references heavy. But the excess is largely appropriate for the environment because DeathCon itself is intentionally extravagant. Cozy talks to the world at the same volume she lives in it.

But beneath all that noise, the novel keeps coming back to broader questions of connection, identity, responsibility, and the uneasy boundary between life and death. Its more interesting concern is therefore not just the existence of the undead, but how people respond to a world in which death does not necessarily mark the end of human interaction. Cozy is a particularly effective protagonist because her unusual profession exists alongside recognizably ordinary emotions and relationships. Nzondi crams these concerns into an unapologetically energetic mix of zombie horror, supernatural fantasy, humor, and adventure. DeathCon has plenty of blood in its veins, but what breathes life into the story is the discernible heart beating underneath.

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ENGAGE WITH LH | Click on the cover image of the book DeathCon and buy yourself a copy right off the bat!

BOOK REVIEW

Book: The Ascension
Genre: Mythic Urban Fantasy
Author: J M Shaw
Rating: 5/5
Reviewer: Stavyah Vatsarah

J M Shaw’s debut novel in the Callum Walker series, The Ascension, is a modern fantasy with an impressive scope of imagination and a focus on moral character. Callum Walker is the hero; he is a young man living quietly in Duncaster but with an extraordinary inheritance that makes him different from the ordinary world in which he abides. Shaw works to establish this duality: Callum is deliberately inconspicuous, but he has skills that make it increasingly difficult to remain anonymous. The imaginative tension of the novel is this contrast between his pedestrian life and the secret world that gradually opens before him.

A Well-Built Fantastical World

Shaw’s portrayal of Callum works particularly well since his powers don’t make him invulnerable. He is explicitly described as ‘not immune to fear,’ and he imperfectly masters his powers, so his encounters with the supernatural are a matter of nerve as well as of capability. His character is shaped not just by what he can do but by how he responds to challenges. Shaw embodies this principle in Callum’s statement: ‘It’s what we do despite it that defines us,’ a formulation that neatly captures the novel’s interest in courage as choice rather than temperament.

The speculative architecture is one of the novel’s most considerable strengths. Shaw creates a secret magical world called the Veil that exists alongside modern-day Duncaster, a world where the supernatural exists beyond ordinary human perception. The Veil is called ‘a world only accessible to those with magic,’ but Callum’s knowledge of mythology gives him the vocabulary to recognize beings that others dismiss as mere fantasy. The relationship between folklore and lived reality lends the novel a pleasing intertextual quality, for the mythical is not just invented but purposefully linked to traditions of storytelling and belief. Shaw also provides an internal discipline for magic, with words of power and specific types of knowledge; the use of magic can have physical consequences. The result is a fantasy system that is governed, not randomly deployed.

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The Ethics of Power

Shaw’s handling of the supernatural is especially lively, with monsters having unique physical and narrative existences. The novel places its fantastic creatures within a larger mythological vocabulary, allowing Callum’s study of mythology and folklore to become an important part of his understanding of the world around him. This is one of the novel’s more striking literary devices: mythology is knowledge, not decoration. Shaw thus creates a context in which old stories gain new imaginative vitality while retaining their connection with the modern world. It results in fantasy that is accessible but with a clear base in folklore.

The Ascension is very concerned with power and its uses under its supernatural premise. Shaw makes an important distinction between having power and using it responsibly, especially in Callum’s understanding of what it means to possess extraordinary abilities. This prevents the novel’s conflict from becoming a morally weightless spectacle. Shaw’s emphasis on conscience gives the fantasy an ethical dimension more compelling than any simple opposition between strength and weakness. In this novel, power becomes important in itself because its exercise requires judgment.

Trust and Human Connection

Callum’s emotional life adds another layer of substance to the novel. His isolation and fear drive his desire to stay out of the spotlight, not just a quirk, and Shaw allows this solitude to shape his relationships with others. His interactions with those around him gradually reveal how little company Callum allows himself. These details make his solitude more than a character trait; it becomes a central emotional condition. Thus, Shaw’s fantasy has an intimate countercurrent, asking what it means to live with extraordinary difference and to yearn for ordinary connection.

For this reason, The Ascension earns a 5/5 from me. Its strengths are cumulative: Shaw blends a vividly imagined supernatural world with grounded characterization and an evident concern for conscience. More significantly, the novel does not need its protagonist to stop being vulnerable to be compelling; Callum’s uncertainty serves to characterize him. ‘Everyone feels fear,’ he says, ‘but character is what you do when you feel that fear.’ This is a particularly effective distillation of the novel’s governing philosophy. Shaw’s achievement is to make fantasy serve character rather than oppose it; she produces a novel that is easy to read and morally aware, where the issue is not what power can do but what a person will do with it.

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ENGAGE WITH LH | Click on the cover image of the book The Ascension and buy yourself a copy right off the bat!