Even White Trash Zombies get the Blues, by Diana Rowland
Book Review by Joshua Palmatier
Have you read this book?
I was looking forward to reading Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues, the second book in Diana Rowland's White Trash Zombie
series, since I finished the first book. I really liked the first
book--the writing, the character, the storyline, and the treatment of
zombies. So I got to this one as soon as I could once it was out.
The premise is that Angel--a white trash chick with small problems with the law and perhaps major problems with drink, drugs, and her family life before she became a zombie--is now working at the coroner's office collecting dead bodies and is attempting to get her unlife back together. She needs the job for its access to brains, of course, but she also needs it to help pull herself out of her troubles and help with her probation. She's on the right track, but when someone holds her up at gunpoint and steals one of her bodies--one that she's suspicious of even before the holdup--she gets blamed for "losing" the body and those in power use her as the scapegoat for the screw-up at the office. Her past is coming back to haunt her, and to make it worse, it appears that something rather sinister is going on at the corporation where she picked up the body that was stolen. When she begins to check it out, things go from bad to worse fast.
I want to say up front that I really loved this book, still love the character and the treatment of zombies. As a reader, I'm rooting for Angel and want her to succeed. The zombie world building is stellar, both thoughtful and appropriately gross without being gratuitous in any way. This type of zombie makes sense, and the rules are clear. This being a second book, I expected some typical second book syndrome to kick in, but I think Diana Rowland handled the second book appropriately. She doesn't linger on the zombie aspects from the first book too much; they're there, but that stuff has been moved to the back burner. Instead, we get NEW aspects of zombies that weren't covered in the first book because they wouldn't have come up then. But with the conspiracy plot in this book, the fact that we're learning this new stuff about zombies now makes perfect sense. Once that conspiracy plot really kicks in, the book drew me in and kept me reading.
And that's my only small quibble about this book: it took a good chunk of pages before I felt that the story really got started. Mostly, I was impatient for things to start moving and was happy when they did. So if you start this book and it seems perhaps a little slow at first, I suggest you just keep on reading, because it gets good after a short while, and when it's good, it's good. You won't be disappointed. This is the only aspect of the book that spoke of second book syndrome to me.
So, a great urban fantasy series continues. I highly recommend this series for those looking for something different in that jam-packed field. I think you'll love the character and the detail of the zombie world building. Meanwhile, I'm left to wait impatiently for the third book in the series to come out.
The premise is that Angel--a white trash chick with small problems with the law and perhaps major problems with drink, drugs, and her family life before she became a zombie--is now working at the coroner's office collecting dead bodies and is attempting to get her unlife back together. She needs the job for its access to brains, of course, but she also needs it to help pull herself out of her troubles and help with her probation. She's on the right track, but when someone holds her up at gunpoint and steals one of her bodies--one that she's suspicious of even before the holdup--she gets blamed for "losing" the body and those in power use her as the scapegoat for the screw-up at the office. Her past is coming back to haunt her, and to make it worse, it appears that something rather sinister is going on at the corporation where she picked up the body that was stolen. When she begins to check it out, things go from bad to worse fast.
I want to say up front that I really loved this book, still love the character and the treatment of zombies. As a reader, I'm rooting for Angel and want her to succeed. The zombie world building is stellar, both thoughtful and appropriately gross without being gratuitous in any way. This type of zombie makes sense, and the rules are clear. This being a second book, I expected some typical second book syndrome to kick in, but I think Diana Rowland handled the second book appropriately. She doesn't linger on the zombie aspects from the first book too much; they're there, but that stuff has been moved to the back burner. Instead, we get NEW aspects of zombies that weren't covered in the first book because they wouldn't have come up then. But with the conspiracy plot in this book, the fact that we're learning this new stuff about zombies now makes perfect sense. Once that conspiracy plot really kicks in, the book drew me in and kept me reading.
And that's my only small quibble about this book: it took a good chunk of pages before I felt that the story really got started. Mostly, I was impatient for things to start moving and was happy when they did. So if you start this book and it seems perhaps a little slow at first, I suggest you just keep on reading, because it gets good after a short while, and when it's good, it's good. You won't be disappointed. This is the only aspect of the book that spoke of second book syndrome to me.
So, a great urban fantasy series continues. I highly recommend this series for those looking for something different in that jam-packed field. I think you'll love the character and the detail of the zombie world building. Meanwhile, I'm left to wait impatiently for the third book in the series to come out.
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