What’s the book? White Trash Zombie Unchained by Diana Rowland
How dark is it? bloody pink like fresh brains. More funny than dark.
How is it? 5/10 alligator teeth
I accidentally picked up the sixth book in the White Trash Zombie series without reading the first five. It was fine, everything was pretty well explained and I understood what was going on. In fact, things were so well explained that I might have been rolling my eyes if I had read the first five, groaning “I know this already, get to the new stuff!” It’s hard to say. But I liked this well enough that I might eventually read all the previous books; if I do, I’ll have a more solid opinion on the level of explanation these books involve.
Anyway, Angel is a zombie and also self-described white trash but by the time this book starts she’s starting to get her life together. She’s got a good job as a morgue tech, friends both zombie and human, and she’s taking a couple of classes at the community college. Seems like she’s currently balancing a human-style life with a job and school while also doing more secret work for the zombie tribe she belongs to. There’s a lot of back story to this secret work, but the book explains all the relevant bits when they come up.
This is one of those “zombies are just like humans except they’re indestructible and have weird eating habits” books, and the central problem in Unchained is a sudden outbreak of mindless shambling zombie-ism. In order to combat it, the zombie tribe brings in the brilliant but evil Doctor Kristi Charish. This does not go well for anyone. Secrets are revealed, betrayal happens, people die. But the zombie alligators, who are adorable and important to the plot, end up fine.
Unchained was a solid adventure with lots of humor, much in the style of iZombie or Santa Clarita Diet; I enjoy zombie romps and this was a nice working class Louisiana-flavored twist on the theme. It also made me miss the easy mass market vibes of my younger years, back when genre novels had no pressure to be important or literary. Don’t get me wrong, I love that genre fiction is getting respect and attention and it’s really spurred authors to deepen their characters and tackle some interesting themes. But sometimes it’s nice to just escape into a good story without it having to mean anything and I didn’t know how much I missed that until I picked up a book that did just that. Just fun characters, an exciting story, humor and just a touch of zombie gore. Yeah, it was good.
Darker Books 