Them or Us by David Moody
My rating: 3/5 cats
hmm, so as far as the “look at me, i am taking the ‘zombie’ novel to new and interesting places” angle goes, i think this book delivers. but it is definitely a more subdued and reflective novel than the two that came before it. and that’s fine, but it is not helping out my “spooky spook month” very much.
because, hey, i am all about the maturation of the zombie novel: Zone One, Raising Stony Mayhall, and The Reapers Are the Angels are all fine examples of novels that are and are not books about zombies, and which elevate the genre into more sophisticated terrain.and this is, technically, not a zombie novel because it is not about the undead, but about a plague whose symptoms are divisive; that pits the infected against the unchanged, so it boils down to the same line-drawing between what is “human” and what just used to be human. but the first two books in this trilogy, from what i remember, were more action-based, and i was hoping for a conclusion that was in keeping with the tone of those, rather than a self-searching novel about humanity and power struggles and social morality and justice etc.
as a stand-alone novel, i think i would have liked this more: a bleaker-than-bleak picture of humanity whittled down to its breaking point after a game-changing event, where individuals must re-establish social codes and re-evaluate just how important the social element of society is, and if there is any place for it under the new reality, or if the needs of the individual supersede whatever ingrained community-feeling keeps trying to re-assert itself.
it is interesting, but only occasionally bloody, and parts one and two made me anticipate more “bloody rarrrr,” less “thinky hmmmmm”.
i think if one were to read just this book, without any expectations, most would love it. i just don’t think it was a “fair” way to end the trilogy.
bloody raaarrr pleez!!
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