Dread Nation Review




  OH. MY. GAWD! Okay, so if you guys haven't heard about this book, I'm going to give your post-rock self a fairly new book that you are going to want to pick up ASAP. Truth be told I have no idea what the genre of this book is, it's historical fiction, but I feel like it's more revisionist historical fiction, but then there are dystopian aspects to it because there are ZOMBIES, or shamblers as they call them in the book, but holy shit you will love this book. Also, I wrote this in September (?) so this maybe a bit old.

   So this book is about Miss Jane McKeene who is one of the students at Miss Preston's School of Combat in Baltimore. It takes place during "post-war" Civil War, although technically the Civil War was never finished it was... put on hiatus because zombies take priority over the Union and the Confederacy. In this alternate universe, as opposed to being slaves, African Americans are sent to combat schools to be taught how to fight the Shamblers as a part of the Negro Reeducation Act. Jane's main goal is to finish school and go back home to her mother in Kentucky, but after being swept into a series of corruption, Jane and her classmate Katherine, are sent to a resettlement that claims to be a utopia. I have never really read anything like this; I guess you have alternate universe historical fictions out there (like Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin where the book takes place in a world where the Nazis won) and there are a few historical fictions that take place during the Civil War, but to combine the two aspects together with zombies is just a completely unique idea. Also, I have to applaud Justina Ireland for being able to include an asexual character as well as a bisexual character into the book without it being their whole character development. While there is a possibility that this was just thrown in to be "woke," this is the first book in a series (so far there's only one other book confirmed for the series) and there's definitely a possibility for Ireland  to develop this more, but since this book is more plot based, I feel the second book will be more character-based, so I highly doubt that this will just be a throwaway characterization.




 The one problem I had, and it isn't really a problem, is that I couldn't really understand how Katherine could appear white enough in Summerland, but was sent to the combat school. I could have missed this detail because I read probably the first half at 4 in the morning, and maybe I'm thinking how the Holocaust was, where if you were 1/ 16th Jewish, you were considered Jewish and I think the Nazis erred on the side of caution. This was maybe a detail that Ireland overlooked for the sake of the plot or maybe I missed something, but it did confuse me.

  All in all, I gave this book a 5 out of 5 stars and I would absolutely recommend this book!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lock Every Door Review

Image
 Okay, so I figured that everyone that wants to reads this book has already read it, but GUYS, this book was so good! As much as I want to talk to people about all the spoilery things that happened, I know that I need to make this review a push for people that are on the fence or people that insist they aren't going to read this book, to read it. So, the book is about a woman named Jules who, at the beginning of the book, was let go from her job and broke up with her cheating boyfriend in the same day or at least relatively close together, and finds a job listing that she can't turn down. Apartment sitting for 3 months accruing her a total of 12 thousand dollars at the prestigious Bartholomew, a glamorous and secretive apartment complex in Manhattan. While things seem a bit off, such as the rules that she's not allowed to have visitors or that she's not allowed to sleep away from the property, but Jules chalks it to the other tenants wanting their privacy, si
Read more

Microphones and Murders Review

    It's time for another ARC review. I did receive this book via Edelweiss, so shout out to them, but this is a cozy mystery centered around two sisters creating a true-crime podcast. There is representation for those that are hard of hearing since there is a character who is now completely deaf (I don't know how well this is done because I do not fit into this demographic and to my knowledge, this isn't own voices for it). But the book is about Liv Olson who used to work as a sound engineer in the #1 podcast series in the country, but now has given up that job to start her own podcast with her younger stepsister, Camry, called Missing or Murdered and the first season is surrounding the disappearance of Amelia Clark, a young woman who went missing after a Youtube video of her went viral that wasn't the most flattering. So Liv and Camry decide to head to Santa Maria to investigate.    Oh my gosh, is this so lighthearted and fun. It's very much a stereotypical c
Read more

Murder Monday #12 Peasenhall Murder

     Rose Harsent, a servant girl at the Providence home, was stabbed to death by an unknown assailant on May 31, 1902. Even though she wasn't married, she was six months pregnant. While it was initially reviewed as a suicide, local clergyman William Gardiner was eventually arrested for Rose's murder. Allegations soon began to rise that Gardiner was the father of Harsent's unborn child and that they had an affair the year prior. Since Gardiner was somewhat prominent in town, he was the foreman at the local seed drill works, and he had a wife with six children, it would make sense why he wouldn't want the affair to be made public, and it didn't help that his home was within sight of the Providence house.    Gardiner was tried twice for the murder, but no verdict was ever reached. During the first trial, the jury was split 11 to 1, in favor of guilty, and the second trial was split 11 to 1, in favor of not guilty, and then the prosecution issued a writ of noel
Read more