Leigh Radford attempts to reanimate zombie genre with One Yellow Eye

With the success of the television series The Last Of Us (2023 to present) and the movie 28 Years Later (2025), the zombie genre has shambled back from its supposed grave.

- Dave Chua

ONE YELLOW EYE By Leigh Radford Fiction/Tor Nightfire/Paperback/ 364 pages/$30.87 ⭐⭐⭐½

Leigh Radford's debut novel One Yellow Eye attempts to breathe fresh life into it by grounding the genre in deeply personal stakes.

The novel follows Ketsa Shelley, a researcher whose husband Tim has been infected by a virus that transforms him into a zombie, as she desperately searches for a cure.

Radford's premise is immediately compelling. Rather than the typical collapse of civilization that defines most zombie fiction, One Yellow Eye presents a world that is recovering from a zombie outbreak, which is surprisingly unchanged.

Ketsa works at a research laboratory that operates with startlingly little security, attending support group meetings for bereaved spouses while chaining her half-alive husband to their bed. This juxtaposition of normality against horror creates an unsettling backdrop.

As is obvious from Ketsa's surname, the influence of English author Mary Shelley's