RogerBW's Blog

2012 urban fantasy, second of its series. Angel Crawford, now a zombie, is finally getting her life sorted out: working at the coroner's, eating spare brains, planning beyond the immediate fun thing. But her life still has ways of getting complicated.

The first book in the series dealt mostly with Angel's interactions with humans; this one shifts rather more into zombie society. But it's not the static system that one sees in something like Charlaine Harris' vampire stories, where everyone has their niche and every possible niche is filled; there's still enough room here for an independent to do things without constantly treading on someone's toes.

The main plot here is that a dead body – which already had some inconsistencies about it – is stolen from the morgue while Angel's there on her own; the big high-tech company is involved somehow, and if this sometimes descends into cliché, it at least does it in a moderately original manner. But there are two stories going on here, and I found I really wanted to hear more about the background one, where Angel (still on probation) is used as a political pawn and vilified in the press (conveniently there's no video evidence to back up her story about the body theft), but the people who know her go in to fight for her… she is aware of the fringes of that, and therefore so is the reader, but I'd have enjoyed more of it. A third strand deals with the zombie society, with lots of reversals: X is really a bad guy! No, he's a good guy! No, he's a bad guy again!

Some of the characters who are meant to be sympathetic just come out as annoying: I don't care how hot her boyfriend is if his defining characteristics are that he doesn't listen to her ideas and tries to hide things from her.

There isn't the energy and vim of the first book here; if I'd read this one first I doubt I'd have gone back to seek that out. I'll try at least one more, though.