Book Review: ‘One Yellow Eye’ by Leigh Radford (zombie pandemic horror)
As soon as I clocked the cover of Leigh Radford’s debut, I knew I needed it immediately and I was so excited when I got approved for a copy on NetGalley.
I’m not a horror movie girl, but I love a horror novel and a pandemic novel, so put them both together? Yes, please!
A scientist desperately searches for a cure to a zombie virus while also hiding a monumental secret – her undead husband. This Leigh Radford debut is full of heartbreak, revulsion and black humour.
Kesta’s husband Tim was the last person to be bitten in a zombie pandemic. The country is now in a period of respite, the government seemingly having rounded up and disposed of all the infected.
But Kesta has a secret . . .
Tim may have been bitten, but he’s not quite dead yet. In fact, he’s tied to a bed in her spare room. And she’s made him a promise: find a cure, bring him back.
A scientist by day, Kesta juggles intensive work under the microscope alongside Tim’s care, slipping him stolen drugs to keep him docile, knowing she is hiding the only zombie left. But Kesta is running out of drugs – and time. Can she save her husband before he is discovered? Or worse . . . will they trigger another outbreak?
Pandemic novels usually take us to the beginning of the outbreak or when the characters are already in the thick of it, with no end in sight. In ‘One Yellow Eye’ we join Kesta weeks after the final zombies have been exterminated and life in London is slowly attempting to return to a ‘new normal’.
The echoes of our very own pandemic and it’s aftermath are in every paragraph. There are government posters plastered around the city telling people to wash their hands and be vigilant, companies and arms of the government profiting off the tragedy, the eerie silence of a city previously teeming with life, and a newfound wariness of every person you meet out in the wild. It was the experience I had of the Covid-19 pandemic here in the UK and it’s always a gut punch to read it.
Kesta’s experience delves into the after: a scientist desperately working to try and find a cure, and an even more desperate wife trying to save her husband. ‘One Yellow Eye’ is a book abot zombies sure, but it’s actually a book about love and grief and the gut-wrenching weight of them. This book is hard to read sometimes. The weight of Kesta’s sadness and despair are slowly drowning her and it’s so, so sad. It’s hard to watch her make some of the decisions that she does, but my heart was with her the whole time. It’s gut wrenching, and even more so during the moments when hope returns to her about Tim.
The zombies of ‘One Yellow Eyes’ do not eat flesh, but they do bite, and they’re single-handedly driven to infect others and pass on the virus. Their eyes are yellow, they can’t lift their hands above their heads and they go grey and sallow, seemingly able to survive indefinitely without sustenance. They just need to pass on the infection.
As Kesta works harder and gets more and more trapped in her misery, the way that she’s described to reflect the way that the zombies are described: her skin is lifeless, her hair lank, her only focus is her work and keeping Tim alive, she shuffles along slowly and in a daze, barely surviving as her body withers under the stress.
There are real moments of gory horror, but most of the horror of ‘One Yellow Eye’ is the portrayal of desperate grief and love that Kesta feels for her husband, and the ways that corporations and governments put profit and politics over people at every turn.
I couldn’t piece together how the novel could possibly end positively, and it did, but it didn’t. It was bittersweet. Leigh Radford debut is a powerful, unflinchingly and aching sad novel about love, loss and zombies. I already can’t wait to see what she writes next.
Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for the review copy.
