Dust by Joan Frances Turner
My rating: 3/5 cats
it is october. i am going to read a bunch of zombie books. this is the first.
and it was very okay. by now, she has written a sequel, and i am hoping that she has gotten her mythology tightened enough to allow her plot a narrow strait through which to flow, because the major problem with this one was trying to understand the rules; they seem awfully fluid and she frequently neglects to address the big picture.
quickly: so in this book, zombies can communicate with each other in a way that does not require tongues and lips and etc, but is more like a telepathic communication, and a resting state that sounds like music. okay, fine. and they dance, collectively, ritualistically, when some inner switch is thrown and they feel a compulsion. ooookay, that’s fine, i am very much of the “take what you are feeling and dance it” state of mind. sure. next. even though humans (“hoos”) are aware of the possibility/probability of the undead, people are still buried when they die, just “away” from civilization, even though these zombies are fast enough to catch deer and other woodland creatures. huh? were i in charge of this land, everyone would be cremated to avoid the possibility of them coming back to eat me, but i’m not—joan frances turner is, and i will go along with her rules. all of them, even if they seem silly and inconsistent.
and many are. i don’t even want to go into all of them here.
but there is enough that is new and intriguing in the zombieverse to make me want to keep reading. what if there was a disease that struck, and affected both humans and zombies alike? and it made humans sick and made them resemble zombies, but it made zombies (oh, and i am apparently falling prey to a huge taboo here, as “zombie” is considered a racist term. but i am using it as a reclamation, i am writing a zombie rap song) but it made the undead stronger. regenerate. not need to eat living flesh. and that is a great twist on the living dead mythos. where do we go from here? oh, many places, each a little odder than the last. beaches, stones, death, second death, third death…no time to explain, just keep up and keep reading.
but what about..?? oh, i guess it doesn’t matter.
hmmm.
if this review is scattered and unclear, i think a bit of it can be blamed on the book. it meanders, and there are about three different ending points, each more confusing than the last. i need to read the sequel, because i need to know the further-reaching ramifications of what is happening here, if she even bothers to address them. i am not positive she will, because she seems to have left many obvious questions unanswered, but…
this sounds like a negative review, but the book is fun to read, i am just trying to understand why the story is so loose and shambly and lacking in perspective.i like the idea of this mythology, i like the surface of it with the itching bugs and the pro-undead solidarity, i like knowing what happens when a vegan becomes a zombie, but it really needs to have more depth, overall.
i move on to another zombie book.
rarrr…
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