I first heard about this book from this award-winning book trailer for it:
I was terrified. But, since it was pretty much about zombies, I knew I would be forced to read it through my own drive to be an expert on something that scares me.
It turned out to be more creepy than gory. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic Earth where the dead have been attacking for so long that the way things were before “the Return” has been almost forgotten. Mary lives in a village protected by what essentially are chain link fences, with the dead coming out of the surrounding forest every day to moan through them. Her village is led by “the Sisters”, a secretive religious group that seeks to keep the village population ignorant of any world outside the fences for their own good, claiming that the village is all that’s left of humanity. Then the fences are breached and Mary, her brother, his wife (who’s been bitten), Harry (Mary’s betrothed), Travis (the guy Mary is totally in love with and everyone knows it), and Cass (Mary’s BFF and Travis’ betrothed) escape into the woods beyond the fences with an adorable puppy and your typical Orphaned By Zombies Waif. Mary is intent on finding the ocean, while everyone else tells her she’s crazy and freaks out.
The language of the book is what I think gives it its creepiness. The zombies are always referred to as “the Unconsecrated”, giving the entire thing weirdly religious overtones. The division between humans and the unconsecrated is also more blurred than in other zombie works. In the first few chapters, Mary’s mother sees Mary’s father return to the fences as one of the Unconsecrated and throws herself towards him, getting bitten through the interlacing metal. The Sisters give her a choice of being killed by their guards before the infection spreads (the logical zombie option) or being released into the forest to join the Unconsecrated and her husband. Mary’s mother chooses to join her husband and Mary, while watching her mother convulse with zombification, suddenly starts wondering if she should have dressed her more warmly, if her mother will finally know the answers to the questions she seeks, if the Unconsecrated know something she doesn’t. Because the timing of the book is so far after the Return, the Unconsecrated aren’t viewed with the same horror and Kill-Them-All attitude as in other works where they just begin to rise. To the people of Mary’s village, they’re just part of life, and no reason to interrupt the melodrama of ridiculous love triangles.
There’s a sequel, which I think is about Mary’s daughter (yeah, she, at least, lives) called The Dead-Tossed Waves. It’s also been recently announced that they’re making a movie, maybe starring Kristen Stewart. I cannot wait for all the needless dramatic pausing and intense blinking action.
