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directorpurry's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Gun violence, Racism, Violence, Blood, Death of parent, Gaslighting, and Classism
Moderate: Slavery
Minor: Child death
bookishkellyn's review
adventurous
emotional
reflective
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
If you loved the first book, you may hate this because it has a vastly different vibe. It’s written in split POV and features less gore but deals heavily with friendship, heartbreak, and grief. I absolutely loved all the character introspection this sequel provided.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Torture, Violence, Blood, Grief, and Murder
Moderate: Racism and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Racial slurs, Slavery, and Abandonment
moonbasket's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
An absolutely stellar sequel. I am a sucker for duologies and I think this one wrapped up Jane and Katherine's story well. I am a fan of 19th century history, usually pre-Civil War, but this series was exactly my kind of thing. The book is written for a younger audience, but it doesn't feel out of place to read it as an adult. As a white person, I learned a lot about the inner feelings and experiences of black women and I hope that this book will help me have continued empathy and grace for people who do not look like me and have been harmed for generations by my ancestors and currently by other white folks. It is amazing to see Justina Ireland wrap up such complicated feelings and experiences into a zombie novel and communicate them so clearly. I am very excited for her future books.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Slavery, Murder, and Pandemic/Epidemic
Minor: Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Suicidal thoughts
It's a zombie book set in the 19th century and centered around an old west caravan trip. There is violence and killing. The gore is particularly explicit, but it's definitely there.greenlivingaudioworm's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
2.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Death, Gore, Racism, Slavery, Violence, Blood, Grief, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, and Injury/Injury detail
emmehooks's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
The first half of this book was not it for me but I read the second half in one sitting. I would read a 3rd in the series. I disliked that Jane and Katherine’s perspectives switched between every chapter and would’ve preferred longer chunks.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Gun violence, Racism, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Grief, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Slavery, Torture, and Colonisation
Minor: Cursing
beccaand's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Racism, Violence, Blood, Grief, and Murder
Moderate: Slavery and Torture
raekit's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Slavery, and Murder
Moderate: Sexual assault
crownoflaurel's review
adventurous
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Confinement, Racism, Slavery, and Xenophobia
wardenred's review
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Welcome to being friends with Jane McKeene, the hardest job in the world.
I really wish I liked this book more than I actually did. Because there was so much cool stuff here! The setting itself is beatuifully executed: all the historical details merged seamlessly with the added element of zombies, and all that light shed on the kind of people history loves to forget. The cast of characters is wonderfully diverse and pretty much everyone gets a moment to shine. There are plenty of little scenes that absolutely beg to play out on a tv screen. I loved the inclusion of Katherine as a narrator in her own right; I feel her chapters added a lot to the story, especially in the first part when Jane is largely out of action and mostly gets to be heartbroken over at least two different people. I liked every single action sequence.
But at the same time, all this awesomeness just never clicked into a solid story for me. The pacing is super rocky. There's that entire first half where nothing much happens until the plot twist in the middle. There are two absolutely beautiful chapters at the beginning of the first half (seriously, my favorite in the whole book and possibly the whole series) that carry such promise about all the change that happened to the characters, and then the story starts to meander again. A lot of the really important events happen either entirely off-screen or are jumbled into something very short; meanwhile, what feels like merely connective tissue drags on for pages and pages. There are numerous plot threads, including some coming all the way from the first book, that are underdeveloped or left hanging.
I frequently react to novellas with, "I wish this was a full-scale novel." With this book, my reaction is the opposite: I wish this was a novella. Or a string of short stories. Maybe all those meaningful parts would shine brighter if they weren't bogged down in all the rockiness!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Confinement, Death, Racism, and Violence
Moderate: Slavery and Torture
lilacs_book_bower's review
adventurous
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I really enjoyed the first book. Jane had such an engaging, funny voice, and she was really a character to root for. It is an intriguing alternate history, where zombies (called shamblers) rise from the dead on the battlefields of Gettysburg, and kill and bite/turn people. Black people are used as cannon fodder in the war against the dead, and young Black women can be trained to fight the dead and protect white women. In the sequel, after the town of Summerland falls to shamblers, Jane and her friends escape, but there is an immediate death that sends Jane into depression and on a quest for revenge (over a character that I did not think was remotely worth it, but love is weird). While the change in her character makes sense due to the plot, I really missed the old Jane's voice, and consequently didn't enjoy this book nearly as much. It didn't feel like there was a lot to this book, if that makes sense. On the plus side, we now have Katherine as a narrator, in addition to Jane, and I liked seeing her POV (and her ace rep). Katherine, and her loyalty to her best friend Jane, is the saving grace of this story. Ireland shows multiple races in the 1800s Western US and handles well the explanations of racism against Black people, and the stress that puts on them, just to survive. On the negative side, story lines feel half-fleshed out, characters that should interact don't, the pacing was uneven, and I'm not entirely comfortable with the way Ireland handled the discussion of the Chinese immigrants or the Native Americans. The book felt way too long for the amount of plot that actually happens. I was looking forward to this one, and unfortunately, I was disappointed.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Racism, Slavery, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Grief, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism