Tom has to go to zombie territory, the plague states,
with his brother for the first of what are likely to be many trips to come. He’s
looking for his sister, a child, a zombie, lost in the outbreak.
Of course his brother, like so many others, is really blasé
about the zombies now. There’s no reason to be afraid, he was assured,
certainly not reason to carry a weapon.
Then there’s the zombie escape. Tom flees for his life,
relying on his father’s connections to rescue him – and a handful of grizzled
veteran zombie hunters to keep him and his fellow novices alive.
I liked it, but where’s the rest of it?
That’s kind of how I felt after reading this book. I
liked the story, I liked the characters, I liked the world setting. But I think
more could have been done with just about every aspect of it. It had a huge
amount of potential, some excellent frame work and raised some really
impressive concepts and issues and didn’t follow through
The protagonist, Tom, has some major baggage – he was
there during the outbreak, he saw his sister turned into a zombie and he blames
himself, despite being a child when it happened. Not only does he blame himself
but so does his family and a number of other people who have completely
forgotten what it was like during the outbreak. Because zombies have been
rendered somewhat harmless, a lot of people have no concept of how dangerous
they are – and that same attitude means that people scorn Tom for not having
the knowledge and skills then that professional hunters have now
This is a really interesting point that is somewhat reinforced by the group travelling through the zombie wilderness, with the contrast between the tourists and the experienced hunters. The tourists are inept, helpless, ignorant and argumentative – not in a comic or over the top way, but in a very human, realistic way; because scared, angry, confused people are some of the most annoying creatures on the planet. They contrast perfectly with the ruthless, very prepared and very skilled hunters and it not only shows how dangerous zombie hunting is, but also how unreasonable the accusations Tom faced were.
And so much more could have been made from that! And his
fraught relationship with his dad and his brother! And the way he treats the
Hunters compared to the other tourists.
Tom’s mission in the zombie-lands is to find his zombie sister – and, again, so much more could be made of that. His guilt and grief, the question of what to do when they find her, the impossibility of the task – it’s all touched on, but it’s just touched on.
The world is an interesting post-zombie-disaster world in
that the disaster has, effectively, been contained. Zombies haven’t taken over
the US, but they have taken over several states which have been cordoned off from
the rest. The US functions – but the actual details of that are left vague
which I can accept as irrelevant to the plot, but I want to know more. The
plague states aren’t ignored, however, in fact there’s an entire industry
around hunting zombies, removing their infectious glands and making them into
slave labour.
There’s so much to be analysed here – the morality of it, the economic effect of it, how that contrasts with Tom’s quest to find his sister – is he going to buy her? Is he going to have her “made safe”? Again, we have a lot touched on but it could be so much more.
Then there’s the half-breeds, the zombies with human
qualities and the implications of them – especially in relation to things like
Tom’s sister and the zombie slavery – which just isn’t really explored.
Especially since they do some very odd things that we never have chance to see
explained but I want to explore.
Most of the book is a fun, exciting and really well
written story of a group of people fleeing through the plague states to safety.
It does a really good job of introducing the world and touching on several of
the aspects both of that world and of Tom’s own life – but the main focus is
the story. It shows the hunters, a lot of really clever precautions and
negotiations they make to do their job. It does an excellent job of showing
their training and experience and a really human job of showing how people
react in a crisis. Behind all that is Tom’s connection with the halfbreed which
is really nicely paced and handled. It’s a good story – but I feel like most of
the book failed to use the awesome foundation that had been established. Like
we’re in a vast, amazing playground and deciding to sit quietly in its
emptiest, most boring corner. We’re having great fun in that corner. We’ve made
that corner entertaining. There’s some good stuff here – but the rest of the
ground is just waiting for us.
On the inclusion front, the book’s lacking. We have no
LGBT characters, I didn’t notice any POC characters and there were two notable
women – one a tourist who wasn’t even especially prominent in the story except
as a victim (one among many) and the halfbreed. She’s a prominent character,
but she’s also a semi-coherent slave.
As the first book in the series, it has done its job. The
world and the characters have been displayed in a way that makes me very eager
to read more – almost desperate in fact. The potential suggested in this first
book is huge, the concepts to be grasped meaty and fascinating and the world
has several unique elements that beg to be explored. The only failing is that
so little of it was done in this book that I’m both hungry for the next and
worried that the exploration isn’t going to happen
