Zombies Vs. Unicorns

Book 89 of my 2015 Reading Challenge

read from December 14 - 17

Zombies Vs. Unicorns 

Summary (via Goodreads)

It's a question as old as time itself: which is better, the zombie or the unicorn? In this anthology, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier (unicorn and zombie, respectively), strong arguments are made for both sides in the form of short stories. Half of the stories portray the strengths--for good and evil--of unicorns and half show the good (and really, really bad-ass) side of zombies. Contributors include many bestselling teen authors, including Cassandra Clare, Libba Bray, Maureen Johnson, Meg Cabot, Scott Westerfeld, and Margo Lanagan. This anthology will have everyone asking: Team Zombie or Team Unicorn?

My Opinion

This was a fun read that satisfied the 'Z' in my A-Z reading challenge (read a title that starts with every letter of the alphabet).  I love the artwork.

I don't have things to say about each story but I do have a quote from each one.

The Highest Justice

Quote: "The unicorn tossed her head, and the bandit's corpse slid off, into the forest mulch."

Love Will Tear Us Apart

Cute title wordplay for a zombie love story.  I will look for this author again.  One of my favorite zombie stories.

Quote: "He opens his eyes, and now they're not buggy at all. They're hard and fierce and iced. He looks like he might kill or kiss you. You hold your too-slow breath and realize that you don't care which."

Purity Test

I will read this author again.

Quote: "But you could get used to pretty much anything, if you gave it enough time - eating in soup kitchens, sleeping on the street. Unicorns were not that hard, and breaking into an evil wizard's basement was turning out to be easier than getting into the high school weight room after hours."

Bougainvillea

Quote: "She feels like someone has planted a tree in her chest and then pressed fast-forward on the world, branches growing and twisting and pushing her apart from the inside."

A Thousand Flowers

Quote: "I was under orders to speak to her only when spoken to, and to resist any attempt she might make to engage me in conversation, but had I obeyed them we would have passed our days entirely in silence, so to save my own sanity I kept to my practice after the birth of greeting the lady when I entered, and she would always greet me back, so that we began each day with my asserting she was a lady, and her acknowledging that I was Joan Vinegar, which otherwise we might well have forgot, there being nothing much else to remind us."

The Children of the Revolution

Good but the main character is a stupid horror cliche that can't follow instructions, the kind you want to shake some sense into.

Quote: "It was unthinkable to run home. Sometimes it is worth any amount of suffering just to prevent giving your parents the opportunity to be right."

The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn

I will read this author again. One of my favorite unicorn stories.

Quote: "They know unicorns are deadly, my parents tell me that they are evil, and I know everyone is right. But I still love mine."

Inoculata

Very interesting. One of my favorite zombie stories.

Quote: "These days there's just two kinds of real estate: ours and theirs, human and zee."

Princess Prettypants

Quote: "It was Liz Freelander's seventeenth birthday, and so far it could not have been going worse."

Cold Hands

I will read this author again.  One of my favorite zombie stories.

Quote: "James was the boy I was going to marry. I loved him like I'd never loved anything else. We were seven when we met. He was seventeen when he died. You might think that was the end of our story, but it wasn't. Death is never the end of anything, not in Zombietown." 

The Third Virgin

I will read this author again. One of my favorite unicorn stories.

Quote: "I took one more step and lifted my head slowly, arching my neck like a parade horse. It's a ridiculous pose, but I discovered a long time ago that humans love it. I heard her gasp."

Prom Night

I will read this author again.

Quote: "Tahmina thought at times like this that it was weird to have to play cop with your friends. Like some kind of mock trial experiment in social studies where each person played a role and somebody always broke character by giggling. Nobody was laughing these days."