Angel continues to get her life together, aiming for her
GED, continuing to work at a job she loves and even working on her shaky relationship
with Marcus, setting new rules and aiming for a new beginning.
But the experiments on zombies are continuing – and her
own creations come back to haunt her, whether she wants to be a zombie-mama or
not. Whatever her misgivings about Pietro, she has little choice but to work
with him, but in doing so she learns more about him and his organisation and
reassesses how much she can trust him and how much she can forgive.
And then even mother nature conspires to make life more difficult
and a real life zombie horde, just like in the movies (well, almost).
This is a story about Angel. There are a lot of other
things going on, a lot of other things she’s involved in, but ultimately this
isn’t a story about them. This is about Angel, her life, her friends, her
family, her relationships. This is about how she fits into things, how she gets
involved in things and how she lives. It’s an extremely character driven story.
That isn’t to say there isn’t a lot happening – a lot of
really deep and fascinating things in this incredibly interesting world. Pietro
continues to run his organisation that Angel dubs the “zombie mafia” and their
competing experiments from a rival company and there’s all kinds of nuance and
implications from that
But we don’t centre on all of this – we centre on Angel,
how this affects her, how it puts demands on her and how she fits within these
zombie organisations. After the events of the last book, Angel’s definitely
very much involved even without her relationship with Marcus; but a disaster at
her house is as important to her as Pietro’s plots and machinations because
this is a book about Angel.
In terms of writing style, it’s perfect, it hits the
sweet spot. We have enough description without being inundated by it, we have
excellent pacing without being overwhelmed, all the elements in Angel’s life
are covered in a well balanced fashion without her ignoring things you’d think
she’d pay attention to. We get enough of Angel’s voice and thoughts to keep her
centred and see her grow, without so much as to turn it into one long Angel
monologue of angst and fee-fees. It’s balanced and paced well.
I love Angel as a character – she is so complex and she
has grown so incredibly since the first book. But her growth itself has been so
natural and has left its marks on her – because she has grown, she hasn’t just
magically transformed. So she’s a character who is still assailed by doubts and
low self-esteem – there are times when she looks around and can’t believe the
company she keeps, that she’s too much of a nobody who can’t possibly be around
these people. Or she thinks she can’t possibly do something – like pass her GED
– because she has such a record and expectation of failure behind her. At the
same time she’s a character who genuinely loves it and is almost surprised when
anyone praises her skills, her intelligence and her competence because she
appreciates the validation after a life with so little. And because she sees
her own growth and likes to see it recognised in others. Angel has her
insecurities but she recognises where and how she has grown. She knows she’s
achieved a lot, she knows her growth is impressive and she is justly proud of
that – and that’s so wonderful to see, a protagonist who is legitimately proud
of who they are and what they’ve achieved and not for some grand,
universe-saving act, but because she has turned her life around from where it was.
