The Aussie Zombie

It was the cover of Generation Dead that originally caught my eye with it's bright colours and title, but when I read the synopsis, I wasn't 100% sure about the actual book itself. I'm a zombie purist - I like 'em dead and brainless, and in Generation Dead the teens that come back from the dead, although not breathing, eating or even perfectly mobile, can still talk, go to school and definitely don't eat brains for dinner.

It took me a while to get into the plot as it's fairly slow-moving for the first hundred-odd pages, although the zombies are introduced right the beginning. Once I got past the slower part however, I found myself enjoying the pace and the plot a lot more, even if it was in the back of my mind that this is everything I don't like in zombie books.

Phoebe is an interesting character, being Gothic and obsessed with some pretty dark music and along with her best friend Margi, is a bit of a social outcast at school. On the other side of the coin is her childhood friend Adam, who's a football playing jock that lives with his mother and step-father who he nicknames the STD. All of the characters are unique so they are easily distinguishable from each other, and the living characters are quirky and fun, whereas the undead characters are really quite fascinating.

It's also great to see the parents having quite a lot of involvement in their childrens' lives, even if it isn't always the most politically correct way of parenting.

One thing that I was really hesitant about was the inevitable ickyness of a potential zombie romance, and although the book starts to veer into love-triangle territory as well, these zombies don't decay, so there's a level of protection from vomit-inducing scenes.

As this is the first book in a series, I didn't expect all my questions about the zombies to be answered so I wasn't overly disappointed to find out that was indeed the case. The 'zombie-ism' is limited to teenagers, and then not even all teens who pass away come back, and the cause of this 'outbreak' is unknown, although speculation abounds.

A large part of the plot focuses on the undead and the living learning to get along (for the most part), particularly as the law does not recognise the undead as human beings, and various organisations are springing up around America either in support of, or against establishing basic human rights for the undead.

Despite a slow start, by the end I actually quite enjoyed Generation Dead, and I'm planning to read the next book in the series, particularly as Mr. Waters writes in a way that I particularly liked, with realistic dialogue and interesting plot ideas (even if zombies shouldn't talk!).

Read more of my reviews at The Aussie Zombie