I remember reading Stephen King's"The Stand" when it first came out and thinking, "This is a great plot. If only there were some characters this would be a great book."Now Justin Cronin has written that great book. And its the first of a trilogy! With characters, dialogue, a vibrant imagined society, very scary monsters - everything you could want in a good novel. An entire vividly imagined world. This is wonderful.
It doesn't look like Kim Paffenroth is going to make millions of dollars with "Valley of the Dead" but it is a strange and lovely zombie tail. He re-imagines Dante as a survivor of a zombie apocalypse, journeying through circles of zombie hells. The result is moving and elegant.
Now that I think of it, real writers and academics have everything they need to produce superior horror. Anyone versed in the Bible, Herman Melville, The Illiad and the Odyssey, and Shakespeare already has all the horror tropes. And the skills to make them come alive.
This is a wonderful trend and I hope to see a lot more of it.
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