by Lia Habel
Published by Random House Publishing Group
Released October 2011
Received through Net Galley
From Goodreads:
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.
My Thoughts:
This was my first zombie book AND my first steampunk book. I always thought I would hate anything that had to do with zombies but with all the zombie craze I read in the blogosphere I knew I had to at least give it a try. To my surprise, I really enjoyed this book. I'm not going to re-summarize because the above synopsis is pretty thorough.
I loved both Nora and Pam. Two young girls growing up in a society that has the ideals of the Victorian era where the girls are expected to marry young and marry for money. They bucked the system and I like that. I also really loved Bram. Dead as he might be, he was incredibly loyal, and had a very kind heart.
I also really loved the whole steampunk thing. I figured I would, I love the wardrobe anyway, but it was really interesting to see the two themes combined.
One thing that I loved with this book is that I never got confused. When you are writing in a different time and almost a different world, it can be confusing. It helped that the girls were students and it really flowed for them to give us the "how we got here" explanation by way of school conversation.
I also really loved that they explained the zombie phenomenon as a disease. My only experience with zombie related entertainment was too stupid to be funny for me, and definitely too funny to hold any real terror.
A love story between the living and the walking dead, how do I start. When I first caught that this would be a love story I became incredibly skeptical. How? I didn't understand at all. The fact that they bring up the reality of the situation, acknowledging that there will be no forever and (thank god) that zombies can't be intimate helped me frame this in a way that I could still enjoy the book.
So while I can't say that I will now love all things zombie, I really loved this book. I look forward to reading the rest of the Gone with Respiration Series.
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