Tomorrow Land by Mari Mancusi

Title: Tomorrow Land
Author: Mari Mancusi
Pages: 281
Publisher: NLA Digital
My rating: 3.2 stars
Goodreads rating: 3.69 stars
Published: March 8, 2012

I requested this title on NetGalley and was approved.  The author and publisher are not getting any favoritism from giving me the eBook to read.  My review is honest.

Description:

Imagine finding your first love, only to be ripped apart by the apocalypse. Peyton Anderson will never forget the day she was forced to make a choice--between her family--and Chris Parker, the boy she'd given her heart. Now, four years later, as she steps from the fallout shelter and into a dead and broken world, he's the only thing on her mind.

All Chris "Chase" Parker wanted was to take Peyton away and keep her safe from harm. But he waited for hours in the rain on judgment day and she never showed--breaking his heart without ever telling him why.

Now the two of them have been thrown together once again, reluctant chaperones to a group of orphan children in a post-apocalyptic world where the dead still walk...and feed. As they begin their pilgramage to the last human outpost on Earth, can they find a way to let go of old hurts and find the love they lost--all while attempting to save what's left of the human race?

I think I might have a love-hate relationship with this book. I picked it up almost as soon as I was done with Dearly, Departed, and it was so much different... 

Peyton is a kick-butt part cyborg 19-year-old girl after her four years in the fallout shelter/time capsule her father put her in when the apocalypse came.  It wasn't too sudden - there were signs all around them, and it had basically already come in the form of "zombies" somewhere around a few weeks.  {Disclosure - the reason why I use the quotation marks with the word zombies is, well... read it and you'll find out.}  Peyton is a bit of a wallflower, only rising in popularity at school because she's dating one of the jocks.  With each chapter going back and forth between the years 2030 and 2034, you get to see more of what she's really like in the future chapters, and what she would like to be in the past chapters.  Plus, its nice to see how the person she was shapes the person she is.  You find out what happens in the past to make her part cyborg, which is kind of cool. 

Chris is a typical nerd.  Chase seems to be a typical "non-leader leader" in the apocalypse.  Yes, they are the same person.  But they seem SO different in the past chapters v. the future chapters.  Chris is just this sweet little stalker boy with a major crush on Peyton, who really doesn't like him.  At all.  Chase is the second-in-command of the rag-tag group of survivors, and apparently gets gorgeous.  An apocalypse can do that to a guy *winks*. 

The book was pretty entertaining, but there were a few things that kind of drove me nuts.  I don't want to give anything away, so I'm not going to say what it was.  But lets just say I don't think something like that would cause someone to almost bleed to death.  I honestly think that one incident's impossibility factor was one thing that made me rate it lower.  That, and I feel like I needed to read Neuromancer by William Gibson.  But the twists and turns the author puts out there are pretty good, and, for the most part, realistic.  It was worth the time reading it.

Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel

Title: Dearly, Departed
Author: Lia Habel
Pages: 470
Publisher: Del Ray
My rating: 4.7 stars
Goodreads rating: 3.93 stars
Published: October 18, 2011

Description:

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.

Dearly, Departed had me enthralled from page 1.  I'd heard about it a while ago via Goodreads, but was unable to pick up a copy due to being broke.  Then it just kind of slipped into the back of my mind, waiting to come to the surface during a library adventure one balmy day.  I am really, very glad it did!  The characters were so utterly believable, at one point I started looking at my coworkers and thinking some of them were living zombies {too much reading at work?}. 

The story {basically} begins with Nora Dearly being kidnapped as a hoard of undead swarm her house a year and a day after her father's death.  These undead are the bad guys, called the Grays because of their gray uniforms, not to be confused with Company Z {yep, "Z" for zombie}.  Bram is the one in charge of rescuing Nora, who doesn't notice anything wrong with him except that he's blind.  Or so she thought.  He's really a well-kept zombie who's eyes are clouded over {like what happens to any of the undead/reanimated}.  Nora is transported back to Company Z's base, where she slowly begins to trust the zombies.  She definitely doesn't at first, which makes for some rather hilarious/interesting interactions.  Soon she discovers that all the zombies on the base have their heads on straight {minus Sam, who literally can take his off and hang it on the wall while he works}. 

During her time at the base, Nora learns to trust Bram along with his group of zombie friends/soldiers {they're just a small fraction of the zombie populace at the base}.  Ren, the tech of the group, helps Nora get a hold of her friend Pam to tell her she's not dead, only to find out the Grays have taken over New London, with a few people hiding in their houses {the ones who turned, but kept their wits about them} and most everyone else locked in two vaults in the church. 

I really liked Nora!  Her character was so real, I could picture all of this happening.  She was raised in a home that wasn't too strict, but went away to boarding school so she could learn to be a lady {and for other reasons I won't list because that would just be a spoiler}, so it was believable that she would do the things she did, and only cringe at some of them {one being when she accidentally flashed Bram her bloomers}. 

Bram.  Oh, Bram.  If only you weren't a rotting corpse.  And if only the author wouldn't keep reminding us that you were a rotting corpse!  I was a little conflicted with his character.  I loved him, and the author did point out that it was hardly even noticeable that he was dead.  But I knew it.  In his chapters, you can see that he's thinking about not wearing out his muscles, being careful with his skin.  Which are all things any rotting corpse concerned with staying intact would worry about.  There was a slight "ick" factor to that, but other than that I just had to love him. 

Looking at the cover, it seems like this novel would have at least a bit of romance, right? It was tossed into the mix so subtly, you kind of forgot it was there, which was a good thing.  I had a hard time wrapping my head around the whole thought of stumbling across a section of her making out with Bram, who is a walking corpse {thankfully there isn't really such a section}.  Granted he apparently doesn't really look like one {other than the eyes} or smell like one {they explain how all the zombies are kept clean/smell-free/etc in the book}, but the thought of them possibly making out?  Gross.  I guess I now see why so many guys think vampires are absolutely disgusting. 

And the villain that you don't know is a villain?  Well played, Lia Habel. I'm just going to leave it at that, because I feel that might already be too much of a giveaway. 

All in all, I really enjoyed this one.  It took me about a week to read, but that's because I do almost all my reading on breaks at work and its a 470 page novel.  Now to wait patiently until the next one comes out {hopefully} this September.

The Dark and Hollow Places by Carrie Ryan

Title: The Dark and Hollow Places
Author: Carrie Ryan
Pages: 374
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
My rating: 4 stars
Goodreads rating: 4.12 stars
Published: March 22, 2011

Description:

There are many things that Annah would like to forget: the look on her sister's face before Annah left her behind in the Forest of Hands and Teeth, her first glimpse of the Horde as they swarmed the Dark City, the sear of the barbed wire that would scar her for life. But most of all, Annah would like to forget the morning Elias left her for the Recruiters.  

Annah's world stopped that day, and she's been waiting for Elias to come home ever since. Somehow, without him, her life doesn't feel much different than the dead that roam the wasted city around her. Until she meets Catcher, and everything feels alive again. 

But Catcher has his own secrets. Dark, terrifying truths that link him to a past Annah has longed to forget, and to a future too deadly to consider. And now it's up to Annah: can she continue to live in a world covered in the blood of the living? Or is death the only escape from the Return's destruction?

Oh Annah.  Honestly, I think Annah reminds me more of Mary {from The Forest of Hands and Teeth} than Abigail/Gabry does, even though Gabry was raised by Mary.  Or maybe its just because its been so long since I read the first two books that my faded memories of Gabry and Mary are just no comparison to Annah.  One thing they all have in common: They're fighters.  They might not start out as fighters {I don't remember Mary or Gabry being fighters in the beginning of their stories, but, like I said, its been a while since I read those}. 

I know I haven't review the other two books in this series {I say series, because I honestly hope Carrie Ryan writes another letting us know what happens next}, so writing about this if you haven't read them might be a bit of a spoiler.  I mean, you now know that Mary lives, as well as Gabry.  And Catcher.  And, by the description, you know Catcher makes it to Annah in the Dark City.

This book had the least interaction with the Unconsecrated, which is nice in some ways but at the same time kind of taking a step back from the other books.  In all of the books they're looking for another place that is safe from the Unconsecrated, but the first two the characters never really look at the world as a whole - they don't have the resources to.  In this book, Annah learn while being locked away in the Sanctuary {that is anything but} that the Recruiters have gone out through most of the country and have searched for places that have heald up against the Unconsecrated and found very few.  In fact, by the time Gabry, Elias, Catcher and Annah are all at the Sanctuary, the leader of the Recruiters tells her that tiny island is all that's left of the uninfected world {of course minus Catcher, since he's Immune but carrying the infection}.

The thing I both liked the most, yet somehow the least, with this book was how Ryan built the relationships of the characters.  Yes, there was always the undercurrent of love/teen angst in the first two books, but those seemed centered more on survival.  The love and relationship aspect of those were put on hold for the more overwhelming "my word, the infection is spreading, run, run run!" aspect of the books.  In this one, since they're trapped on an island that's pretty well fortified against the Unconsecrated, there really isn't a whole lot of zombie chases or catching your breath as you read about them getting away only to discover they are right next to a sleeping horde, just far enough that the Unconsecrated can't catch the scent of uninfected human flesh.  Oh no.  This book is about horrible, uninfected men who are using Annah, Gabry and Elias to keep Catcher coming back with supplies.  The thing that surprised me the most was the fact that ~*~SPOILER~*~ Ryan didn't kill off any of the four main characters.  She's always killing off the main characters or people they love dearly.  The Recruiters were constantly telling Annah that they only need one of them to "keep Catcher tethered and doing what we want."  It just seemed natural that that would be the best excuse Ryan could have for killing one of them off.  Of course, I guess that would have been the easy way out, killing at least one or two of them off.  Not that I wanted to see any of them die...

The book does end on a happy note, and is rumored to be the last in the series {so, really, its a trilogy}.  However, it just kind of ends.  A lot of questions are left unanswered, but most of the main ones are addressed.  However, we don't know if Catcher can spread the disease {my guess is no, because I think Annah accidentally ingested some of his blood... read the book and you'll know why}, we don't know if there is any life outside of the Sanctuary other than the few people Catcher was able to keep alive in the Dark City after it was overrun.  My biggest question is this: Carrie Ryan, are you going to answer all those questions you posed, or just leave us hanging?

This was an interesting series, and I would suggest it to people even if they aren't into the whole zombie thing.  I give it 4 out of 5 stars.