Samurais of Fukushima

The Battle of the Dead

By: Hugo L. I. Cukurs

Narrated by: James Coyle

This is the English edition of the Brazilian book Samurais of Fukushima—the battle of the dead. The Portuguese edition has an average of four stars on Amazon, and it has gotten many good reviews from many Bookstagrammers.

Shop now, and enjoy this mix of horror with historical fantasy.

It is a bloody journey, where two samurais with a devastating past, a Viking, a geisha, and a group of survivors try surviving in a zombie apocalypse. They will cross Feudal Japan, leaving Fukushima to Niigata in search of one last hope, facing betrayals, deadly traps, great battles, many losses, and hundreds of zombies.

No one is safe on this journey, where zombies are not always the worst threat.

©2018 Hugo Lawrence Imants Cukurs (P)2023 Hugo Lawrence Imants Cukurs

Excellent performance

I was engaged by the reader, even though i am not a fan of this genre.

Unique

I enjoyed most of the characters there are quite a few but the main ones go through good development and the side ones too its a unique samurai and zombie story to be sure

Exciting Zombie Apocalypse!

This is like Memoirs of a Geisha meets The Walking Dead!! Zombies! Samurais! Fighting with Swords! The apocalypse! How can you not love this !!? A+

Enjoyed it!

I enjoyed this book and it was a fun listen. I really enjoyed "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" and was also a Walking Dead fan, so it's not surprising I enjoyed this. Adding the genre of the Japanese history and samurais is a fun twist. I do recommend it for anyone who enjoys Asian fantasy and zombie apocalypse books.

My only issue with this book is that it had so many characters and with names that were similar. I had a hard time keeping up with who was who. For instance there are three characters named (spelling phonetically since I listened to it) Keto, Kayto, and Kajee. And there was also Sayto, Saya, Satori. There were so many characters, at one point someone was mentioned and I said, "what, he's still alive?"

Overall however, I did enjoy the book and would recommend it to folks who like these genres.

Historical Japanese Zombie Fiction

3.5 Stars
As someone who loves Asian inspired fantasy and zombie fiction, this certainly seemed right up my alley. I loved the historical feudal Japan setting. The cultural references were easily my favourite aspect of the story. This is not an ownvoices story and I cannot personally determine the historical accuracy, but the details included made me think that this book was well researched. 

The Japanese setting really helped to breathe life into a subgenre of horror (zombies) that is arguably quite exhausted. This one was not particularly gruesome, but I also appreciated that it didn't shy away from the brutalities of life. It followed a lot of the familiar zombie tropes, but the setting made the story feel more unique. 

Despite appearing to have all the elements I love in my fiction, I never became fully immersed in the story. I think that was because I struggled to connect to the characters, which were at the heart of the narrative. The author took time to give them all backstories and personality traits, yet I struggled to differentiate them at times or care for their well-being.

Regardless, this historical zombie story was a fair amount of fun to read. It's technically the start of a series, but this first book wraps up with a fairly tight conclusion (including an epilogue). If you enjoy zombies or Asian fantasy as much as I do, then you'll likely want to try this one for yourself. This is a great "read a like" for people who enjoyed the historical Korean zombie show on Netflix, Kingdom.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the author for review.