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Book Review: My Life as a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland
Summary:
Angel wakes up in the hospital to discover she was found naked and overdosed on drugs on the the side of the road in her small town after a fight with her boyfriend, Randy. Someone mysteriously drops off medicinal energy drinks along with a note that she must work loyally for at least a month at a job newly acquired for her at the city morgue. A high school drop-out living with her alcoholic and periodically abusive father, Angel decides that she should seize this opportunity. It certainly helps that pills and alcohol no longer seem to do anything for her. As her oddly gloppy energy drinks start to run out, though, Angel finds herself having cravings for something found in the morgue–brains.
Review:
I bought the kindle edition of this book the instant it came out as a birthday present to myself for two reasons. First, the title is amazing. Second, look at that cover! Yeah, the whole thing just screamed my named. My instincts were right, too.
It’s been a long time since I read a book that hits all the elements I love in literature like this one–urban fantasy style horror, a setting that rings familiar to me, a completely relatable main character, and a fun love interest. It’s a world that’s simultaneously familiar and special, which is what makes urban fantasy fun. Angel’s world of trailers, beer cans, and nothing to do reminds me a lot of my childhood growing up in Vermont. On the other hand, Angel has cravings for brains. And she somehow manages to keep this a secret in a small town, certainly a monumental task.
Angel’s problems are a combination or fantastical ones (must find brains to survive) and completely real world ones (a history of an abusive mother and a father with alcoholism). Angel has a lot to overcome even before she gets zombified, but the zombification adds an element of distance that allows tough things to be talked about without that dragging down dullness often found in literary fiction.
Rowland reworks the zombie trope without completely removing the essentials of a zombie. Angel can function in day to day life as long as she has brains once every two days or so. If she doesn’t have them though, her senses slowly dull and she gradually turns into the lurching monster simply desiring brains that we all know from the classic zombie movies. This really works, because it allows Angel to be a part of society, yet still be the monster we’ve all grown to know and love.
That said, I will say that I am getting a bit tired of the monsters surviving by working in a morgue trope. I wish Rowland had come up with something a bit more creative for how Angel gets her hands on brains than that. It’s starting to seem like the staff of the morgues in all of urban fantasy consist entirely of monsters and sociopaths. Thinking more outside the box would have made me love the book instead of really liking it.
Overall, this zombie book gave me thrills, chills, and laughs galore, but it also brought me close to tears. It’s genre fiction with a heart, and I highly recommend it to anyone willing to see zombies (or white trash) in a whole new light.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 320 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: Purchased
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
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Book Review: The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
Summary:
Jacob Marlowe finds out he’s the last werewolf living and has just been informed by the WOCOP that they plan to kill him during the next full moon. That’s just fine with him. He’s been living for almost 200 years and is just plain tired of it. So he plans to let the WOCOP’s tails follow him and just let the death happen. The fates don’t quite see it that way, though, and nothing quite goes according to Jake’s plans.
Review:
Think of this as what would have happened if Anne Rice chose to write about werewolves instead of vampires. The Last Werewolf reads very much like Interview with a Vampire only with the characteristics of werewolves instead of vampires of course. By this I mean that the sentences and story structure are incredibly literary while addressing the highly genre topic of werewolves.
Unlike vampires, werewolves must eat a human during each full moon or they become ill. Animals are no substitute. They cannot take a bite and leave the victim alive. No, they must completely ravish the victim. This is no weak True Blood style werepanther or werewolf that can simply shift at will and avoid killing people. Jake is affected by The Hunger and must eat and kill to stay alive. The rest of the month when he’s not in wolf form he has to come to terms with his actions. The crux and root of the dilemma at the heart of the story is this:
We’re the worst thing because for us the worst thing is the best thing. And it’s only the best thing for us if it’s the worst thing for someone else. (page 197)
It’s quite the moral conundrum and is addressed eloquently in the story.
There is also of course Jake’s suicidal mentality. He wants to die, but he doesn’t want to be the one to do it. He’s completely over life. Life is boring and pointless. There are absolutely some beautifully depressing passages about the emptiness of life that both perfectly depict depression and remind me a bit of the Romantic period of poetry. Think of Lord Byron. That type of thing. Beautifully suicidal. That may bother some readers. To me, it’s often a part of great literature. This overwhelming sadness and feelings of helplessness. They’re common human emotions and lend a great force to the narrative.
Now, I was sent this for review due to how much I enjoyed American Psycho in January, so I was expecting it to be graphically violent and sexual and have the two mixed-up. It is all of those things but–dare I say it–it wasn’t quite violent enough for me. I was expecting something shocking, due to the American Psycho connection, but I can see a lot of people reading this and not being put-off by the amount of violence. Compared to your average R rated action flick, it’s really not that bad. On the other hand, a lot of people are profoundly disturbed by the violence in American Psycho. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the level of violence in this book, and I think Duncan was probably smart in that, since it will have a wider appeal. What can I say. I was looking forward to something incredibly gross and twisted and instead got a lot of beautiful prose with the occasional murder. It was a happy surprise, absolutely. I just want to make it abundantly clear to potential readers that if you can handle an R rated horror movie, you can definitely handle the violence in this book, so don’t be turned off!
So the prose is beautiful and the topics addressed and discussed are important or at least interesting, so why am I not raving? The ending left me disappointed. It felt rather cliche and expected, and I didn’t like what became the focus in the end. There are so many other ways the ending could have gone that would have been amazing and powerful, but instead I finished this book and basically said, “AGH not this shit again.” *mini-spoiler* It includes pregnancy and babies, and ya’ll know how I feel about that. *end mini-spoiler*
Overall this is a literary take on a genre theme. It is violent and sexual, but not disturbingly so. Recommended to fans of Anne Rice.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: ARC from the publisher in exchange for my honest review
Book Review: The Last of the Demon Slayers by Angie Fox (series, #4)
Summary:
Lizzie is back from Greece with her hunky griffin boyfriend, Dimitri, and the geriatric witch biker gang (not to mention her talking dog Pirate and Pirate’s pet adolescent dragon Flappy) with plans to help the witches finally set up a real home at a New Jersey biker bar after years on the run. Of course nothing has ever gone according to Lizzie’s plans since the day she turned 30 and inherited her demon slayer powers. Naturally, her birth father shows up in a pillar of fire begging her to help free him from a bad situation with an even badder demon in California. Thus, Lizzie and the gang wind up following fairy trails across the country in an attempt to stop the demon, who just so happens to be out to kill demon slayers too.
Review:
Ah, this series. I have such a love/hate relationship with this series! That’s mainly because I love everyone except Lizzie and Dimitri. Why why is everyone else in this world so hilarious and relaxed, whereas Lizzie and Dimitri are basically THAT couple. You know THAT couple. They’re the ones who met each other during freshman orientation week and proceeded to have the perfect dream relationship throughout all four years of college and promptly moved in together and got engaged after. They’re the ones where the girl whines and bitches to you about some minor fight she had with her dude during your junior year when you’ve barely slept in three days and haven’t had a date in months. THAT COUPLE. It’s hard to root for that couple.
On the other hand, though, there’s everyone else. The geriatric biker witches are amazeballs. I would pay good money to have a bunch of older women like that in my life. They’re strong, empowered, and bound and determined to live their life to the fullest no matter what society says they should be doing. Interestingly, grandma gets a boyfriend this entry, and Lizzie is none too happy about it. Grandma tells her unequivocally that old people have sex. Yes! What? Lizzie is the only one who should be making everyone eye-roll with her sexy antics? I think not.
Then of course there’s Pirate and Flappy. Hilarious animal characters hit my heart *right here*. I would put up with almost anything just to see Pirate trying to train Flappy to sit. Seriously. Fox has a real talent for writing animal dialogue that is believable without being too sophisticated. It’s clear she has some critters in her life. For instance, Pirate runs up to Lizzie excited to see her yelling “Lizzie! Lizzie! Lizzie!” and then proceeds to beg for food. Typical doggy.
The plot definitely thickens in this entry. I’m not sure I’m totally happy with how it has. Essentially, it turns out there are actually more demon slayers, and as a Buffy fan, this just irritated me. I don’t like being told there’s only one only to have more show up. Either there are a lot of slayers or there aren’t. Plus, did we really have to make the new slayer so feminine? Lizzie is already a pretty extraordinarily feminine slayer. It’d be nice to have some variety. On the other hand, the rest of the plot of the supernatural world is interesting. There’s Lizzie’s father plus a visit to purgatory. I’m betting that the next entry will start to confront the presence of “good” supernatural creatures, since we’ve now visited hell and purgatory. If Dante taught me anything, it’s that that leaves only one place to go.
It’s interesting how I can’t stop reading this series even though I can’t seem to make up my mind how much I like it. I’ve rated entries everywhere from 3.5 to 5 stars. I think in general the experience of the hilarious side-kicks and minor characters off-sets the annoying main couple enough that I can kinda sorta mostly ignore them. There’s also always the hope that they’ll break up, which I root for in every book.
Overall, if you’ve stuck with the series this far, you’ll enjoy this entry. It takes the focus off the griffins and puts it back on Lizzie and her biological family. The ever-expanding cast of characters all fit together smoothly and hilariously.
3.5 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
Previous Books in Series:
The Accidental Demon Slayer, review
The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers, review
A Tale of Two Demon Slayers, review
Book Review: Soul Hunt by Margaret Ronald (Series, #3)
Summary:
Native Bostonian Evie Scolan is an adept bicycle courier and has her first real relationship in a while. Of course, her life isn’t quite that simple. First, she’s The Hound with an uncannily adept sense of smell that helps her find things. Plus her boyfriend is a werewolf. Then there’s the whole try to keep the magical Undercurrent in Boston under control so her beloved city doesn’t fall apart thing. Not to mention the death sentence given to her by yet another sector of the Undercurrent giving her only until Midwinter to pull everything together. Plus the Sox are sucking this season.
Review:
Yet again, I accidentally picked up a book that is partway through a series. I’ve noticed this is a lot easier to do when it’s an ebook than a print book, because the print book tends to have a giant “3” or something on the binding, whereas the ebook gives you zero clue that this is part of a series. Work on that, publishers. Due to this fact, I spent the solid first half of the book trying to figure out what the heck was going on in Evie’s world. Unlike paranormal romance that tends to offer up a quick recap of the important details, it would appear that urban fantasy isn’t so keen on that. Well, that and Ronald’s world she has created is incredibly complex and hard to understand fully part-way into a series.
That aside, however, how is it for an urban fantasy novel? Well, the fantasy element is strong and intensely connected to elements of urban living from good and bad neighborhoods to trolley tracks to old, abandoned buildings, to secret tunnels and ghosts. This has it all if you’re after some seriously steeped fantasy.
Further, as a Bostonian myself, I can tell you that Ronald gets the local slang and layout of the neighborhoods right. Personally, I think she’s a bit heavy-handed with the Red Sox love demonstrated by Evie. I don’t really think Evie would be thinking about the Sox season sucking when she’s currently facing death, but maybe I’m just not enough of a fanatic myself. Hah.
I think, perhaps, that why I couldn’t get into this partway through the way I could other series I started in the middle is that I don’t like Evie, and the mythos of the Undercurrent is way more confusing than it should be. I can’t think of very much that’s appealing or redeeming about Evie as a character, which is problematic when she’s the heroine. Similarly, she’s not beautifully broken or anything. She reads as just…..average. The fact that this is the case when she also has this weird supernatural nose is saying something. Make Evie evil! Make Evie kick-ass! Just don’t make her so dull that I have zero doubt that I wouldn’t give her a second glance if I happened to see her on the streets of Boston.
Similarly, the mythos of the Undercurrent seems to change to suit the author’s needs. Maybe I was missing plot twists from missing the earlier books, but it all just seems so much more complex than it needs to be. Plus, what exactly makes Evie repeatedly go up against demigods when her only supernatural talent is the nose thing? It just doesn’t make sense to me. That and the whole part dog thing is just….ew.
I came into this wanting to love it, as I do with any book set in my home of Boston. The fact is though, too much turned me off from it. It is a fairly well-written urban fantasy, though, and a nice change from the typical southern setting we see. I’d recommend it to urban fantasy fans looking for a change of scenery who don’t mind a rather ordinary heroine who’s basically part dog.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
Previous Books in Series:
Spiral Hunt
Wild Hunt
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This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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