Friday, April 27, 2012

It's the New Zombie Electropunk

Dearly, Departed

Written by: Lia Habel

Released: October 18, 2011 by Del Rey
Summary: Love can never die.

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 modeled 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.

In Dearly, Departed, romance meets walking-dead thriller, spawning a madly imaginative novel of rip-roaring adventure, spine-tingling suspense, and macabre comedy that forever redefines the concept of undying love.



This novel is the first in the Gone with the Respiration series. It’s about zombies and steampunk-ish technology – but there’s not really steam involved and it’s more electronics like we have now, so I’ve coined the term electropunk. At least, I’ve never heard of someone using this term...

Anyway, this was a pretty great read and though it was five months since I read it (thus forgetting a lot of stuff that happened) I can’t wait for the second novel to come out in the fall.

I’m giving this novel a 7.5/10. It was a great 2011 young adult debut novel that you should check out if you want something different than the norm.

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