A huge thank you to Harriet at Random House Children's Books for providing me with a review copy.
Love
conquers all, so they say. But can Cupid’s arrow pierce the hearts of the
living and the dead—or rather, the undead? Can a proper young Victorian lady find true love in the
arms of a dashing zombie?
The year is 2195. The place is New Victoria—a
high-tech nation modelled on the manners, mores, and fashions of an antique
era. A teenager in high society, Nora Dearly is far more interested in military
history and her country’s political unrest than in tea parties and debutante
balls. But after her beloved parents die, Nora is left at the mercy of her
domineering aunt, a social-climbing spendthrift who has squandered the family
fortune and now plans to marry her niece off for money. For Nora, no fate could
be more horrible—until she’s nearly kidnapped by an army of walking corpses.
But fate is just getting started with Nora.
Catapulted from her world of drawing-room civility, she’s suddenly gunning down
ravenous zombies alongside mysterious black-clad commandos and confronting “The
Laz,” a fatal virus that raises the dead—and hell along with them. Hardly ideal
circumstances. Then Nora meets Bram Griswold, a young soldier who is brave,
handsome, noble . . . and dead. But as is the case with the rest of his special
undead unit, luck and modern science have enabled Bram to hold on to his mind,
his manners, and his body parts. And when his bond of trust with Nora turns to
tenderness, there’s no turning back. Eventually, they know, the disease will
win, separating the star-crossed lovers forever. But until then, beating or
not, their hearts will have what they desire.
The
first book in the ‘Gone with the Respiration’ series.
This book
is a brilliant example of what a difference a cover can make. The cover is
usually the first thing I see, it’s the point of contact where the book grabs
me and says ‘look at me! I’m awesome! You’ll never regret getting me!’ either
that or ‘steer clear, you’re being judgemental’. I’m bad, very very bad, I do
judge books by their covers. I try not to, but as I said, first point of
contact!
 |
| U.S. Cover |
So I first saw this book with the American cover, and I thought ‘hmm, self this
looks like a good book, but it is not nabbing my attention enough to get it
now, I shall keep browsing.’
Until the other day, the fabulous Harriett over at Random House Children’s
Books sent me a copy with the UK cover, and before I even realised it was the
same book I was shrieking with joy and saying ‘self, this cover! This book is
going to be fabulous! Look at that tag line! Look at the gone with the wind
southern belle aspect, and the pasty brooding guy! And the lamps! And, hey
look! Are those zombies staggering around in the background?! Dear god this is
fantastic!’ And I promptly started reading it. Just like that, perception
changed, the book became an immediate I must read this now.
And it was
such a good read! I love it when an author has a sense of humour, and is genuinely
just having fun and this comes across
throughout the book.
There are moments of genius and moments of sheer
ridiculous, and some sharp and witty banter that had me giggling aloud. The
sense of fun and amusement on the part of the author comes across so strongly
through reading it that it made it an even more enjoyable read for me. Just
look at the series title – ‘Gone with the Respiration’ that alone was enough to
make me laugh out lout and demand more.
It had a similar feel to some of Gail Carriger’s work, the same humour, the
same elegant wit, and parasols, don’t forget the parasols. But because it’s set
in the future there was a lot more room to manoeuvre and play with the language
and setting. I was a bit hesitant to start with, but actually this worked out
incredible well. Take the parasols that have a gas lamp on the top to indicate
whether a woman can be dated, is married, or is more interested in other women –
genius.
I loved the
characters. Nora was a breath of fresh air – she actually freaks when
confronted with undead monsters. It takes her a long time to start to trust and
be ok with the idea, and when she first emerges from behind her safely locked
door, the first thing she demands is guns. I love her for this so much you
wouldn’t believe. But as well as being smart and sassy and a little bit pouty
at times, she’s incredibly loyal and fights for those she cares about which
made her an all round fabulous heroine.
And Bram,
oh baby I do not normally like zombie’s but you have to be the most gentlemanly
and lovely of them all. And very little decomposing going on, which is always a
bonus… I’ll talk a bit more about the romance in a moment, but suffice to say
he was intelligent, sharp, gentle and again, fiercely protective (without any
stalker aspects, which is always a bonus.)
The host of
secondary characters were on the whole pretty awesome. A little more could have
gone into making Bram’s crew more distinguishable earlier on, I found myself a
bit confused at points who was who, but that does sort itself out part way
through.
Even the characters who only got a bit of main time were really well written
and believable, for the most part very funny, and a fantastic array of the
different facets of society both alive and dead, in this whole new world.
And Pam. Oh
boy did she get awesome. I am so excited to see more of the Pam that emerges
when everything falls apart. She was actually more interesting than Nora at
points, just because of the strength and determination she showed when it came
to protecting those she loved, and even those she barely knew that she wanted
to help.
Let’s talk
about romance – more specifically zombie romance. I’m not a fan. The idea of
someone shambling along with bits decomposing and dropping off who would quite
like to eat your braaaainssss, and a live human having a romance has filled me
with a slightly shuddery feeling in the past, so I’ve steered well clear of
zombie romances until last year. Then I read ‘Warm Bodies’ by Isaac Marrion,
and my perception changed. All of a sudden it didn’t have to be this slightly
disturbing zombie half eating human weird romance. It could be based on more
than making out (shock, horror) and be more about the connection between two
individuals.
This was also the case with Bram and Nora, and I liked the two of them
together, how their relationship and friendship developed. And Ms Habel neatly
sidesteps the ick factor by creating a zombie boy who isn’t decomposing – not in
the same way. All of a sudden we have a yummy boy (yes he’s still yummy,
despite the eyes) who just happens to be dead. He’s still him, he still has a
sense of humour and can fight and sing as good as the living boys – actually he
seems to have a better moral code than most of the rest of the living boys. And
at that stage, where he isn’t decomposing and shambling around screaming
brains, where he is still in tact, merely dead, we have the same scenario as
most of the human girl with a dead vampire boy books out there – and no one
seems to have a problem with the ick factor there.
What I am trying to say (albeit not particularly eloquently) is that the
romance, particularly the zombie un-dead element should not be something that
makes you judge this book before even fully reading it.
It wasn’t
all sunshine and roses though, I did have a couple of problems with the book
which prevented me from giving it the full five star love. Firstly, the number
of point of views. There were five. Now I would have been happy with just Bram
and Nora, I think their story was fascinating enough just on its own, with the
exterior elements being fed in through them. However then Pamela’s story line
got really epic and we wouldn’t have seen that without her point of view, so I
was ok with that one too. Wolfe’s and Dr Dearly’s were a bit much though. I
didn’t find them as compelling, and I just wanted to skip back to the action. I
felt that the things that were revealed through those point of view’s (actually
I don’t think anything much was revealed through Wolfe’s) could have been fed
into the story in other ways, cutting down the number of characters and points
of view which made my head reel a little bit at times.
The other
thing was the sheer volume. Don’t get me wrong, I love long books, there’s a
lot more scope in them and a lot more can be included, but in some cases in this
book I felt like there was just a bit too
much. I realise that there was a vast amount of information to be covered
throughout the book – there was so much back story and information to get the
reader up to speed with the world, but it felt like some of that could have
been cut down or cut out. Some of the situations were given time to amble along
which meant that the road to epic showdown was a long one, and meant that I put
the book down a lot just to have a break even though I was enjoying it so much.
So it was
still brilliant, I still loved it, I will still look forward to the sequel with
baited breath, but there were a few flaws that made it not quite so dazzlingly
brilliant as it could have been. (Although if I did half stars this would be a 4.5 instead of a four.) However if you like Steampunk, humour and an
incredibly brilliant plot then this is an absolute must read.
