Darren Shan’s second instalment in the Zom-B series has just been released (sometime in January 2013), a long-awaited novel after the nasty little cliff-hanger Mr Shan thought would be funny to leave us all on. That’s right Shan, I’m on to you!

But let me tell you: it was worth the small wait. And what’s more is the second book in the series, Zom-B Underground, throws up even more questions than it does answers! This is highly frustrating Mr Shan!

If you haven’t read the first book in the series and are planning on doing so very shortly then please DO NOT read ahead. It contains spoilers…you have been warned!

The plot behind Zom-B Underground picks up about six months after the events of the first book. B awakes to find herself a zombie…with a conscious. But what she thinks is a blessing soon turns out to be a curse and she must deal with the past horrors before she can deal with the present. Hold on to your seats…because things are about to getting very bumpy!

Oh and expect extreme twisted goriness…honestly you sometimes wonder what twisted place Darren Shan’s mind is at half the time. But hey, that’s part of the brilliance of this series, right?

And some of the best scenes were the gory ones, but there were also some scenes addressing humanity versus monster that were amongst my favourites. So here are my favourite scenes from the book: B starts singing an altered version of ‘One Man Went to Mow’, changing the lyrics to ‘B Smith went to mow, went to mow a meadow. But a zombie ripped her heart out, so now she’s a walking dead-o.’ As she says you have to laugh at these sorts of things otherwise you would go insane. The scene where B faces off with the zombies as part of a test is pretty good too, as it shows a small spark of humanity in an otherwise inhumane world. The scene that describes Mr Dowling’s, the clown’s, attire, turns out to be very gruesome. Plus there’s a picture to go with it so you can’t help but visualise it (not that I’m criticising Warren Pleece’s work…it’s very brilliant after all). And finally the scene where we get a déjà vu effect when B looks through the door to the living quarters and she sees a scene similar to that of the canteen scene from the previous book, where zombies are being controlled to attack…except this time the clown, Mr Dowling, is in the middle of it and we are left with more questions as to how he is involved in it all. Like I said, more questions than answers to be had from this book.

And my favourite quotes from the book are:

‘If some creep gets a buzz from watching a one-boobed zombie in the buff, more luck to him.’

‘That’d be like me asking if I could stick my hand up your arse.’

‘I can give you two words. The second is off. Can you guess the first?’

‘But because I’m more hole than whole in that part of my body…’ (just love the play on words here)

Some rather rude quotes here it would seem, but that’s Shan for you.

An 8.2 out of 10 for the second instalment in this crazy series.