Generation Dead - Daniel Waters

vampire love stories have been done to death. ahem. werewolves aren't far behind. with all of this recent "twilight" mania sweeping the nation there's one classic monster who i'm sure was starting to feel a little left out. oh, those poor old zombies. zombies are never romantic heroes. zombies never get the girl. zombies always get shot in the head. (or if you take the advice of the zombie survival guide, the head should be severed with a blade, as blades don't need to be reloaded. my kendo sensei would argue that a blade would be problematic however as it would quickly dull. in fact we actually had this discussion at kendo just a few weeks ago.) anyway, the point of the matter is that zombies have been demonized for too long and it's about time someone gave the poor shuffling, moaning corpsicles a break. thank you daniel waters.

here you have it, "generation dead". for some reason american teenagers have been returning from the grave. however, they don't appear to be out for brains, so much as grades. they shuffle back home and attempt to pick up their lives where they were so abruptly cut off. of course, not everyone is happy to have the walking dead hanging around. some of them are abandoned by their families. some are killed again in zombie hate crimes. and some are not allowed to join the high school football team. of course, my calling them zombies would be considered a bit of a faux pas. in "generation dead" there are perfectly good pc terms for these guys: differently biotic or living impaired.

i quite liked this book. basically it is the story of tommy williams a zombie kid at oakvale high and phoebe the goth girl who falls in love with him. because relationships between zombies and "breathers" aren't really accepted this causes no end of problems. there's a love triangle; phoebe's good friend and neighbour, adam, is also in love with her, but is doing his best to support her. phoebe's best friend, the punky pink-haired margi is absolutely terrified of the zombies ever since her friend colette returned from the dead. and there's pete, your typical dumb bigoted football jock who's intent on causing problems for all of them. everything comes to a rather edge of your seat conclusion in the last few pages. my only complaint being that waters never addressed the issue of the somewhat dodgy zombie research facility. are they really good guys? or could they be responsible for a string of zombie deaths across the country?

ah well, nothing's perfect. and perhaps he's saving that for the sequel. it was nice to see the zombies get theirs for a change.