A review by not_a_violin
The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Volume One: At the Edge of Empire by Daniel Kraus

5.0

Before I say anything else, I need to say that this is a book I had never even heard of until I picked it up off the shelf at Barnes and Noble the other day. I read the inside cover and decided it was worth a shot, so I bout it and started reading it a couple hours later. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't what I got.... In fact, I think what I got was much better than that.

That being said, it also was different than a lot of the books I'm used to. For one thing, I still can't believe how well this book is written. Holy cow! Being written as if it's the work of the protagonist, it adds to his character as well as the overall quality of the book. It gave Zebulon Finch a personality that genuinely sticks out from all the other characters I've read about recently.

Speaking of character, Zebulon Finch was also very original in that aspect. He's selfish, arrogant, and really not someone I would see myself getting along very well with if I met him, but that's just how he is. Reading from his point of view is actually interesting. He sees himself as a monster, but does not insist on whining about it throughout the whole book.

As time progresses, so does Finch. When he was alive, he was not a good person in any sense of the word. Then he died. He had to relearn to speak and to move again, making friends with an ill boy at the same time. He ends up working with a doctor, who later goes insane, so he leaves yet again. During the WWI, he makes another friend, who has an important role later in the book. Everything flows together nicely and has a reason to do so.

When I got about a hundred pages into this book, I was wondering if it is really a YA book or not. It turns out that it is. I get that Zebulon Finch is going to be seventeen as long as he walks the earth, but a lot of things that were happening didn't seem all that YA to me. I wouldn't recommend this book to twelve or thirteen year olds - that's for sure. This book seemed for fifteen or sixteen and up to me. Did that take away from my enjoyment of the book? Nope. I'm just mentioning something I thought while reading.

Ok. This was far from 'eternally young and pretty', which is waaaaay overdone. Finch is dead! He's not just pale or cold: he's actually dead, and he's decaying. It's very slow, but he does decay, just like a normal corpse does. When he gets injured (shot, stabbed, etc.), he does not heal. That hole is left there. He does not have some magical healing power that makes no sense whatsoever. Yay)!

There is only one thing I do wonder, and I hope that it is explained in the next book. How the heck did he come back from the dead? Why? I'm not going to take a star away for this, because I understand that it can be explained later, but I really want to know.

Overall: 4.75 stars