Another zombie apocalypse. It’s clearly the new end-of-the-world scenario: humans getting infected and turned into the walking deceased. At least, novelists can’t leave it alone. So what happens to the infected if they survive? If a cure can be found? That’s the idea posited by Ms. Archer.
It’s a good one, taking us into the shattered and badly reassembled mind and body of one Mara Knight. We are forced into her skin as it struggles to approximate the functions of life. Her heart barely thumps and her lungs don’t quite manage to inflate and deflate with the regularity they once did. She recalls awful things she did when she was a ravening beast—and she doesn’t want to talk about any of it.
Alienation is the name of the game as Mara is crippled with the triple burden of being a teenager, a newly cured (?) Altered with ugly physical injuries and a lesbian who must deal with the girl she once knew and thought was gone out of her (un)life forever. Actually, the lesbianism is a non-existent problem. When everyone has lost somebody or been killed, sexuality is the least of anyone’s worries. The world is as torn up and broken as she is and must deal with her and the others taking the dubious cure as best it can. These first few chapters hint the readjustment is going to be traumatic on both sides.
Mara’s voice alternates with that of Aurora Blake, the girl Mara left behind and who bears the guilt of letting her escape after Mara was infected. The two are on opposite sides of the disease and yet drawn inexorably together by its aftermath.
This is zombie apocalypse as high, tense drama more than supernatural horror. It’s tense, stomach-churning prose about a convict being released and heading back to a home that is more hell than haven. In spite of my initial indifference about the subject matter, I’m actually interested in what transpires as Mara attempts to fit her damaged self back into other people’s lives.
It’s a good one, taking us into the shattered and badly reassembled mind and body of one Mara Knight. We are forced into her skin as it struggles to approximate the functions of life. Her heart barely thumps and her lungs don’t quite manage to inflate and deflate with the regularity they once did. She recalls awful things she did when she was a ravening beast—and she doesn’t want to talk about any of it.
Alienation is the name of the game as Mara is crippled with the triple burden of being a teenager, a newly cured (?) Altered with ugly physical injuries and a lesbian who must deal with the girl she once knew and thought was gone out of her (un)life forever. Actually, the lesbianism is a non-existent problem. When everyone has lost somebody or been killed, sexuality is the least of anyone’s worries. The world is as torn up and broken as she is and must deal with her and the others taking the dubious cure as best it can. These first few chapters hint the readjustment is going to be traumatic on both sides.
Mara’s voice alternates with that of Aurora Blake, the girl Mara left behind and who bears the guilt of letting her escape after Mara was infected. The two are on opposite sides of the disease and yet drawn inexorably together by its aftermath.
This is zombie apocalypse as high, tense drama more than supernatural horror. It’s tense, stomach-churning prose about a convict being released and heading back to a home that is more hell than haven. In spite of my initial indifference about the subject matter, I’m actually interested in what transpires as Mara attempts to fit her damaged self back into other people’s lives.