Wednesday, January 19, 2011

The Reapers Are the Angels by Alden Bell

Book Two on my quest to read all the 2011 Alex Awards. I requested these without even reading the summaries so my first thought upon starting Reapers was basically that I wasn't sure the world needed (or that I could handle reading) another zombie book.

Temple won me over.

Temple is 15, she's been born into a world where zombies exist and she is definitely a product of this new world. She accepts her world, at times revels in it, but carries its weight on her shoulders. She is my favorite type of female protagonist. She's strong, she's assertive, she's pragmatic, she's far from perfect.

She's also basically a drifter and a loner, but when one of the undead wash up on her island sanctuary she knows its time to move on. The novel follows her on her journey from place to place meeting different groups of survivors until the day she meets up with an unresponsive man and her fate becomes entwined with his.

I liked the setting. This is basically the wild west. There are vigilantes, there are the modern day equivalent of wagon trains, there are new "cities" where people are forging a new life for themselves. There are also grotesque things that will make your skin crawl (Spoiler --> like mainlining zombie brains holyeffincrap!!! <-- end spoiler) But, you know, there are ZOMBIES so there is bound to be some nastiness.

I'm a little torn on the ending, one the one hand the story was barreling to that conclusion and on the other hand it seemed a little over the top.

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Book Source = Library Copy

2 comments:

Jenn H. said...

This was the last book I read in 2010, and I was really impressed. You are right; Temple is so fascinating. I was also very impressed with all of the side characters; Bell made everyone just as they should be in a world so wrong.

As for the ending, well, yeah, it was a bit over the top. But somehow that felt right for this book. I can't really see how else it could have ended.

Patti said...

Right, another ending would have been pat. I feel as though a part of me wanted a happy fairy tale ending, but how would that have been true to the story? It totally wouldn't have been. It would have just ruined it.