Library Journal’s Must-Have Spring Books, Editors’ Picks 2017 “A thrilling coast-to-coast journey.” –The Seattle Times “A richly imagined philosophical exploration.” –Bellingham Herald “Exciting action, intriguing characters, epic scale.” –Booklist (starred review) “Poignant and poetic…brings zombie lit back from the dead.” –The Stranger The New York Times bestseller Warm Bodies … poetic…brings zombie lit back from the dead.” —The Stranger
The New York Times bestseller Warm Bodies captured hearts worldwide in twenty-five languages, inspiring a major film and a cult fandom. Now R the reluctant zombie continues his journey in this much-anticipated sequel.
Being alive is hard. Being human is harder. But since his recent recovery from death, R is making progress. He’s learning how to read, how to speak, maybe even how to love, and the city’s undead population is showing signs of life. R can almost imagine a future with Julie, this girl who restarted his heart–building a new world from the ashes of the old one.
And then helicopters appear on the horizon. Someone is coming to restore order. To silence all this noise. To return things to the way they were, the good old days of stability and control and the strong eating the weak. The plague is ancient and ambitious, and the Dead were never its only weapon.
How do you fight an enemy that’s in everyone? Can the world ever really change? With their home overrun by madmen, R, Julie, and their ragged group of refugees plunge into the otherworldly wastelands of America in search of answers. But there are some answers R doesn’t want to find. A past life, an old shadow, crawling up from the basement.
more
I didn’t love the first book, but thought I’d soldier on and see if the series improved a bit. Unfortunately that didn’t happen and I’m DNF’ing this book at 65%.
Alright, so in a nutshell this book continues from the first one, where R and Julie have been changed in bizarre ways, ways that have affected other zombies. R is continuing to improve in becoming more human, but threats are on the horizon that force him and his friends to fight for their lives or die trying.
As much as I wanted to love this, reading this book simply became a chore and I ultimately lost interest.
Before delving into the cons, I will say that the concept (like in the last book) was good. I wanted to follow R in his journey towards becoming more human, and part of that was really good and entertaining. Nora and M’s flirtatious interactions were cute. I also really liked the Axiom Group and their representatives. Talk about frightening!
However, that wasn’t enough for me to continue on any further.
The characters, while entertaining for a while, began to become a bit boring. R has this strange thing going on with his mind and some door in his head, but is constantly confused about it and so am I. Julie has some spunk to her but after a while begins to start whining to get her way and steers the plot for seemingly no reason. Maybe she has a weird door in her mind that she doesn’t understand either, but that’s not really communicated to the reader and is just another source of confusion.
The plot was all over the place. The book started in a good place, but once things hit the fan, things begin to spiral in random directions to where I was fairly confused why they were doing particular things. There just wasn’t enough connecting of the dots going on. Also can someone explain to me the point of the ‘We’ sections of the book? There didn’t seem to be enough explained about what ‘We’ is, and each passage just perplexed me as to why it was included at all. It wasn’t important enough to include in the book and was (get ready for it) confusing.
So yeah, overall this book was simply confusing. The premise was really good, but there wasn’t any kind of linear progression in my mind, and the story dragged after a while to the point I just couldn’t keep going. There are plenty of great zombie series out there. This is just not one of them.
I loved Warm Bodies… this one I put off because Isaac mentioned it was a different tone. Dark. So, I purchased my signed copy when he came and spoke at Village Books in Bellingham, WA then shelved it to save for a not-so-rainy-dark day.
A few+ years passed. I left the Pacific Northwest (which is pretty much always rainy and dark). I only had room for a couple books in our camper. (The impossible choice.) I’m not sure why I picked this one, but I did. I didn’t actually start seriously reading it until we got into our new home.
No, it’s not whimsical, romantic, and funny like Warm Bodies. But the writing is gorgeous, the storytelling and character development complex. There’s still humor, heart, and hope in a world in need of remaking.
The sequel of Warm Bodies, this book reveals even darker happenings developing in the post apocalyptic world Marion created in his first book. This was not a story that could be wrapped up by a kiss and a newly-beating heart. Marion proves he has so much more in store for us, an action-packed page turner that has the thrill of a block-buster but drags you into the heart-wrenching depths of humanity, tragedy and hope.