Title: Generation Dead.
Series: Generation Dead, #1.
Author: Daniel Waters.
Publication Date: May 6th, 2008.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster.
Format: Paperback, 393 pages.
Source: Bought.
My Rating:
The dead boy reached for her, his pale eyes glowing in the darkness.
All over the country, teenagers who die aren't staying dead. Against her better judgement, Phoebe finds herself drawn to Tommy Williams. He's gorgeous, funny, on the football team. And dead. But not everybody is as accepting as Phoebe. There are those who would like the rid the community of this sinister phenomenon, and they'll stop at nothing to achieve it...
Phoebe is pretty much like any other teenage girl, apart from the fact that she’s a Goth. Oh, and the fact that she has a crush on a guy named Tommy, who just happens to be a Zombie. All over America, teenagers who die aren’t staying dead – in fact, they’re getting up and walking away from the morgue. A scarce few of the population are fine with this, and are intrigued as to why this is happening. However, the rest of the society isn’t so accepting of the ‘living impaired’, especially when they want to go back to school and live a normal life. People avoid them, the teenagers skirting round them in the corridors and avoiding eye-contact. There are many of people out there who want the dead, well – dead, and will stop at nothing to do so.
I had been looking forward to reading this book for quite a while; however I was quite disappointed in it to say the least. I have to say; I expected more of a Zombie-Human romance story - however it focused more on the aspect of discrimination/prejudice of the Zombie’s or ‘differently biotic’ teenagers (As society is supposed to call them).
The book is told by three different people’s point of views; Phoebe, Adam and Pete – three of our four main characters throughout the book. First off, meet Phoebe - a full-on Goth, who listens to heavy rock music and writes poetry whilst dreaming of being held by a member of the living dead. Phoebe is the character that the storyline bases around and to be perfectly honest, I’m on the fence on whether I really liked her or not. The way she acts throughout some of the book irritated me. Although, her general character was well developed and it was different to read about her and her life. It was interesting to read about a proper Goth character, rather than characters that claim to be Goth, yet never seem to fit the ‘mix’.
Moving onwards; let me introduce Tommy Williams. Tommy is Phoebe’s crush, and the reason the Football team has got its knickers in a twist. He’s a Zombie - big shock there, right? Tommy, like most of the ‘differently biotic’ teenagers, takes a while to get full sentences out, walks rather slowly and is the ‘leader’ of the un-dead kids. There’s not a lot to Tommy’s character, apart from the fact that he seems to like Phoebe, but I guess there’s not much to say about someone whose main characteristics are gone and is a living corpse.
Now, please welcome Pete, a rude and nasty Zombie hater. If I were to allow myself to use more strong language about how much of an ass Pete's character is, I think it’d have to be censored for younger readers. It's not JUST the fact that he hates the Zombies, it's the fact that he thinks it's his DUTY to 'rid the world' of these 'abominations'. The fact that he can’t even let the ‘Zombie’s’ do normal day to day things in life – say, playing on the football team - to him it’s not natural. How is any of it natural at all? In real life, do the dead suddenly get up and walk away? No. But the Zombie’s in this book are obviously here to stay. People are going to continue to become Zombies after death – whether a Zombie plays on the football team or not – so why the heck should the rest of the team care?! Pete obviously doesn’t care about equality and wants rid of the Zombie’s and anyone who’s friends with them. Great guy, huh?
Lastly, let’s give a warm round of applause for Adam – one of Phoebe’s best friends and the cute guy that lives next door to her. Adam is also on the Football team and used to be good friends with Pete, until Pete decided to start a ‘war’ of sorts against the Zombie’s. Adam took Tommy’s side, and stood up for him throughout the book. However, at the beginning, the only reason he did so, was because Adam has the hots for Phoebe; who’s obviously Pro-Zombie. Adam’s character starts off seeming like a usual jock/popular guy, however as the book moves on he really develops into a caring and interesting guy. He drops the whole ‘cool’ act and actually becomes friends with the un-dead kids - he actually starts to care about what happens to them.
It took me quite a while to actually get into this book; It only started to get vaguely interesting well over half way through. In my opinion there was way too much Football talk and action involved. With me not being a sporty person at all, I was bored nearly to tears reading the Football scenes and nearly gave up on the book on several occasions. However, I was determined to finish this book and it turned out to have a better ending than I expected. I knew that I was going to give it 3/5 stars whilst I was still reading the book, mainly because it just didn’t captivate me or interest me enough. I did hope that once I’d finished it I’d be able to bump it up a star, but the overall book just didn’t do it for me. In conclusion, it was a good read, one I may probably read again one day and I’ll probably pick up the sequel to see what happens next – seeing as it was left on a cliff-hanger. Was it the best book I've read? Definitely not. Would I recommend it to a friend? Probably not.
Quotes
"So you never told me how practice was," Phoebe said, turning to look out the windshield. "How was it playing with the corpsicle?" - Page 70.
"She felt Tommy's light touch on her arm. "The music is ... loud?" Tommy said.
"Very."
"We will ... turn it down," he said. "It takes much ... to make the ... dead ... feel." - Page 169.
Phoebe's pulse was racing through her as she struggled for a responce. She wanted to say something to Tommy, something that would make things better for him, but the only response she could come up with was one she was not ready to give. - Page 380.
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