Night of the Living Dead Christian ~ Book Review & Giveaway

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I've had the awesome pleasure of reading and reviewing Night of the Living Dead Christian: One Man's Ferociously Funny Quest to Discover What it Means to be Truly Transformed by Matt Mikalatos. I found myself laughing out loud many times as I was reading. It was a book that was hard to put down.  Even the cover art is comical.

From the back cover:

In his follow-up to the critically acclaimed Imaginary Jesus, Matt Mikalatos tackles this question in an entertaining and thought-provoking way—with MONSTERS!!! While Christians claim to experience Christ’s resurrection power, we sometimes act like werewolves who can’t control our base desires. Or zombies, experiencing a resurrection that is 90 percent shambling death and 10 percent life. Or vampires, satiating ourselves at the expense of others. But through it all we long to stop being monsters and become truly human—the way Christ intended. We just can’t seem to figure out how.

Night of the Living Dead Christian is the story of Luther, a werewolf on the run, whose inner beast has driven him dangerously close to losing everything that matters. Desperate to conquer his dark side, Luther joins forces with Matt to find someone who can help. Yet their time is running out. A powerful and mysterious man is on their trail, determined to kill the wolf at all costs . . .

By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Night of the Living Dead Christian is a spiritual allegory that boldly explores the monstrous underpinnings of our nature and tackles head-on the question of how we can ever hope to become truly transformed.

My Review:

Matt Mikalatos is an author that uses monsters to look at our reality of our sin nature and the things we wrestle with in our own world.  This story follows Matt and his neighbor Luther, a werewolf.  They work with an interesting band of monsters that are trying to figure out how to be real people. Mikalatos uses vampires, zombies, a mad scientist, an android and a monster hunter to teach truth. You do, however, need to know that this is not a scary book or a horror novel.

Night of the Living Dead Christian creatively, and often hysterically, written. Mikalatos speaks what many of us think. Each of us can identify with at least one of the monsters in this book...maybe not every aspect of the monster but at least some. The zombies are the undead just agreeing with every theological utterance that comes out of the preacher's mouth but they are mindless. Vampires are the opposite of what Christ is all about. They take blood from people to gain eternal life instead living for others. Serious issues all addressed in a humorous and real way. The reality is we are all monsters who can only be transformed through faith in Christ.

I love that this book even includes discussion questions in the back along with A Layman's Self-Diagnosis Guide to Common Monstrosities and an Interview with the Author.

Follow Matt Mikalatos on Twitter, Facebook and his Blog.  I am!

Tyndale House Publishers provided a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes.  All opinions of this book are my own.