Dread Nation
May. 14th, 2019 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Dread Nation, Justina Ireland, 2019 Lodestar nominee. This was terrific. Had me from the first page. Snappy writing, distinctive voice, loved the protag, loved the whole concept, and it's not just silly like some of those "costume drama plus supernatural" movies looked from the trailers (Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, although I should note I haven't actually watched any of them, maybe they're all secretly deep and I'm just being biased), Ireland is saying some really interesting stuff about the utilization of crisis situations to both reinforce and undermine existing structures of power and dominance. We apparently get book two in 2020, and hopefully a book three after that? Because I need a trilogy, after a book 1 this good.
Anyways, a little bit actually about it, to try to really sell the rec here: it's 1880 and the zombies might be winning the Reconstruction. Jane McKeene has been trained to fight, but are zombies really the worst enemy? (Spoilers, of course not, it's white supremacy.) Despite this being a zombie story, it reads much more like action-adventure than horror; it's pretty low on scary and gross (for a zombie story) and pretty high on badassery. Might appeal to people who liked the Rae Carson Gold Seer books, or Westerfeld's Leviathan, or Buffy, or anyone who'd be into a irrepressible Black heroine talking about the germ theory of disease and whacking off heads. (And clever alt-history, and good character stuff between women characters, and investigation of the way racism commodifies its targets similar to some of what Get Out was doing...)
Anyways, a little bit actually about it, to try to really sell the rec here: it's 1880 and the zombies might be winning the Reconstruction. Jane McKeene has been trained to fight, but are zombies really the worst enemy? (Spoilers, of course not, it's white supremacy.) Despite this being a zombie story, it reads much more like action-adventure than horror; it's pretty low on scary and gross (for a zombie story) and pretty high on badassery. Might appeal to people who liked the Rae Carson Gold Seer books, or Westerfeld's Leviathan, or Buffy, or anyone who'd be into a irrepressible Black heroine talking about the germ theory of disease and whacking off heads. (And clever alt-history, and good character stuff between women characters, and investigation of the way racism commodifies its targets similar to some of what Get Out was doing...)