The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Undead
Mark Twain & Don Borchert

Pulled from the grip of Mark Twain's rotting zombie hands is Tom Sawyer like you've never seen him, in a swashbuckling, treasure-seeking adventure, spiked with blood, gore, and zombie madness.
In this expanded and illustrated edition of Mark Twain's beloved tale of boyhood adventures, Tom's usual mishaps are filled with the macabre and take place in a world overrun by a zombie virus that turns people into something folks call "Zum". The United States is infected with a plague of rotting, yet spry, Zum, searching for fresh meat.
In this world, there's no need to whitewash Aunt Polly's fence. Instead, Tom cons his friends into sharpening fence posts to lethal points to repel a Zum attack. To escape the boredom of civilized life, Tom and his pal Huckleberry Finn don't have to fake their deaths, just pretend to be Zum. And instead of playing cowboys and Indians, Tom hones his fighting skills in a bloodthirsty game of "Us and Zum". He always wins... until he bumps into the real thing.
When vicious, self-aware zombies evolve and threaten the town... what will Tom and Huck do to protect their loved ones, and will they live to tell the tale?
With all the comedy, romance, and adventure that readers expect from Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer now becomes a new breed of hero for a whole new world - a grade-A zombie hunter.

I've never come around to reading the original... and now I know why. For a protagonist, Tom Sawyer is not likable. He's a little brat who gets away with pretty much anything and that, in and of itself, is just plain annoying.

Not only is Tom a brat, but this mash up doesn't work very well. While the idea of putting zombies into this setting isn't a bad one, it did not work well. Whether it was the writer, or just the mash up in general, the combination didn't seem to work in the end. There are obvious areas where it's forced and areas where it just confuses the story.

It's never a good thing when you root for the zombies (what few actually do show up in this novel) to eat the main character.

This is the first mash up novel that I just didn't like and didn't work out well. Unfortunately for me, I purchased it because my library didn't have it. This will be exchanged at a local little library for, well, pretty much any other novel.

I do not recommend this.

My rating: Two out of five snails.