You Are So Undead To Me by Stacey Jay
Series: Zombie Settler
Publisher: Razorbill, 2009
Genre: Horror
Sub-genre: Paranormal, Urban fantasy, YA
Rating: 2 1/2 pints of blood
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I have huge issues with the headless covers. I understand the principle behind them, that the reader can mentally insert whatever features they want, but it doesn't work for me. The message I take from this particular trend is that all women are interchangeable, that our identities don't matter nearly as much as having a nice rack. And, I mean, boobs are indeed awesome, but I'd like to think female characters (not to mention the female gender in general) have a bit more to offer than that.
Ok, with that rant out of the way, I have to admit that in spite of the headless issue, I like this cover a lot. The colours really pop, the girl's stance is strong, and what I initially took as a soccer ball is actually a skull, adding a few extra awesome points. If she'd had a head, this would have been a really glorious cover.
When she was young, Megan was responsible for setting zombies to rest when they crawled out from their graves. After a horrible accident which nearly killed her, though, the zombies stopped coming to her, and it seemed as though she'd lost her powers. For five years, Megan's had the pleasure of a normal life, right up until a zombie shows up on her doorstep on the night she has a big date with the hottest guy in school. Her powers are back in full force, forcing her back on duty and taking priority over her social life, no matter how hard she struggles against it.
It's not all bad, though. To catch her up on the five years of studies she's missed, Megan is assigned a zombie settler tutor, her childhood friend Ethan, who has grown surprisingly hot in the years since she saw him last. She is still of course dating the hottest guy in school, but taking lessons on how to deal with the undead is much more palatable when your tutor makes you tingly, even if he does just think of Megan as a bratty little sister.
Before Megan can really get back into the swing of things, though, vicious zombies start attacking her and those around her. These aren't the dead who rise to have their final affairs put back in order; these zombies have been maliciously raised with black magic, by someone who seems to be targeting Megan.
I really love the idea of a "zombie settler," someone who manages the dead to make sure they stay where they're supposed to. A lot of thought went into this aspect of the book, and it was really well done. There's a whole society who deals with the zombies, with a hierarchy and politics, all working to keep things in balance and to keep normal people from finding out about them. Since Megan is relearning everything, the reader gets a pretty good handle on how it all works, and it was probably my favourite part of the book.
I also liked Megan's reaction to all the zombie stuff. She reacts much the way you'd expect a teenage girl to: "ew, gross" and "why me?" It takes her awhile to get on board with having to know and do all this macabre stuff, especially since she knows it's going to interrupt her social life for many years.
Unfortunately, Megan is also one of the problems with the book. She's detailed and often (but not always) relatable, but some of the details don't entirely add up. Megan loves to dance and is extremely good at it. She even has the graceful while dancing/klutz when not syndrome going on, which is true of pretty much every serious dancer I've ever known. She obsessively rehearses for her audition for the high school pom squad, but there's no mention of any dance classes.
She's also not the brightest little bulb. I don't expect every character to be brilliant, but it helps the book out a lot if I haven't got everything figured out before the protagonist gets there. When she talks about the reclusive, crazy old man that every town seems to have, this is what she has to say:
Nathaniel Carlisle had been the only one of the five boys to make it out alive and had been a wacko ever since. He'd babbled about ghosts, about living skeletons who had eaten every last one of his--
"Stop it!" I hissed to myself. The last thing I needed to be doing was mulling over old ghost stories. There was probably a perfectly rational explanation for what had happened in that church.
Like... Nate Carlisle had killed all the other boys and hacked them up and buried them somewhere on his property, and the whole living-skeleton, "I'm so crazy" story was just to throw people off his track.
Really? You've spent the entire book dealing with zombies, including black magiced ones who you know for a fact will eat people alive because you've seen it happen, but you can't figure this story out?
I'm sure you can guess how quickly she figures out the whodunnit. To be fair, though, her blind spot is an understandable one, and I was pleased to see that the main villain was who I wanted it to be rather than who I expected it to be. As in the villain was not the most predictable option, but the most dramatic one. In addition, the foreshadowing for the motivation was so subtly done that the villain's reasoning wasn't obvious until the obligatory monologue, and I am always pleased with a plot twist handled with such a deft subtlety that you think "oh, of course! instead of "yup, called it back on page 10" or "uhh... wut?" I'm less pleased with the monologue, but what can you do?
You Are So Undead To Me is available in paperback
.
Publisher: Razorbill, 2009
Genre: Horror
Sub-genre: Paranormal, Urban fantasy, YA
Rating: 2 1/2 pints of blood
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I have huge issues with the headless covers. I understand the principle behind them, that the reader can mentally insert whatever features they want, but it doesn't work for me. The message I take from this particular trend is that all women are interchangeable, that our identities don't matter nearly as much as having a nice rack. And, I mean, boobs are indeed awesome, but I'd like to think female characters (not to mention the female gender in general) have a bit more to offer than that.
Ok, with that rant out of the way, I have to admit that in spite of the headless issue, I like this cover a lot. The colours really pop, the girl's stance is strong, and what I initially took as a soccer ball is actually a skull, adding a few extra awesome points. If she'd had a head, this would have been a really glorious cover.
When she was young, Megan was responsible for setting zombies to rest when they crawled out from their graves. After a horrible accident which nearly killed her, though, the zombies stopped coming to her, and it seemed as though she'd lost her powers. For five years, Megan's had the pleasure of a normal life, right up until a zombie shows up on her doorstep on the night she has a big date with the hottest guy in school. Her powers are back in full force, forcing her back on duty and taking priority over her social life, no matter how hard she struggles against it.
It's not all bad, though. To catch her up on the five years of studies she's missed, Megan is assigned a zombie settler tutor, her childhood friend Ethan, who has grown surprisingly hot in the years since she saw him last. She is still of course dating the hottest guy in school, but taking lessons on how to deal with the undead is much more palatable when your tutor makes you tingly, even if he does just think of Megan as a bratty little sister.
Before Megan can really get back into the swing of things, though, vicious zombies start attacking her and those around her. These aren't the dead who rise to have their final affairs put back in order; these zombies have been maliciously raised with black magic, by someone who seems to be targeting Megan.
I really love the idea of a "zombie settler," someone who manages the dead to make sure they stay where they're supposed to. A lot of thought went into this aspect of the book, and it was really well done. There's a whole society who deals with the zombies, with a hierarchy and politics, all working to keep things in balance and to keep normal people from finding out about them. Since Megan is relearning everything, the reader gets a pretty good handle on how it all works, and it was probably my favourite part of the book.
I also liked Megan's reaction to all the zombie stuff. She reacts much the way you'd expect a teenage girl to: "ew, gross" and "why me?" It takes her awhile to get on board with having to know and do all this macabre stuff, especially since she knows it's going to interrupt her social life for many years.
Unfortunately, Megan is also one of the problems with the book. She's detailed and often (but not always) relatable, but some of the details don't entirely add up. Megan loves to dance and is extremely good at it. She even has the graceful while dancing/klutz when not syndrome going on, which is true of pretty much every serious dancer I've ever known. She obsessively rehearses for her audition for the high school pom squad, but there's no mention of any dance classes.
She's also not the brightest little bulb. I don't expect every character to be brilliant, but it helps the book out a lot if I haven't got everything figured out before the protagonist gets there. When she talks about the reclusive, crazy old man that every town seems to have, this is what she has to say:
Nathaniel Carlisle had been the only one of the five boys to make it out alive and had been a wacko ever since. He'd babbled about ghosts, about living skeletons who had eaten every last one of his--
"Stop it!" I hissed to myself. The last thing I needed to be doing was mulling over old ghost stories. There was probably a perfectly rational explanation for what had happened in that church.
Like... Nate Carlisle had killed all the other boys and hacked them up and buried them somewhere on his property, and the whole living-skeleton, "I'm so crazy" story was just to throw people off his track.
Really? You've spent the entire book dealing with zombies, including black magiced ones who you know for a fact will eat people alive because you've seen it happen, but you can't figure this story out?
I'm sure you can guess how quickly she figures out the whodunnit. To be fair, though, her blind spot is an understandable one, and I was pleased to see that the main villain was who I wanted it to be rather than who I expected it to be. As in the villain was not the most predictable option, but the most dramatic one. In addition, the foreshadowing for the motivation was so subtly done that the villain's reasoning wasn't obvious until the obligatory monologue, and I am always pleased with a plot twist handled with such a deft subtlety that you think "oh, of course! instead of "yup, called it back on page 10" or "uhh... wut?" I'm less pleased with the monologue, but what can you do?
You Are So Undead To Me is available in paperback
.