Dying To Live, Twelve Years Later

Twelve years later the community has reclaimed more of the city and has settled into a fairly secure life in their compound. Zoey is a girl coming of age in this undead world, learning new roles--new sacrifices. But even bigger surprises lay in wait, for some of the walking dead are beginning to remember who they are, who they've lost, and, even worse, what they've done.

As the dead struggle to reclaim their lives, as the survivors combat an intruding force, the two groups accelerate toward a collision that could drastically alter both of their worlds.

Dying to Live: Life Sentence by Kim Paffenroth begins years after the first books ends, with Zoey (the infant rescued in Dying to Live) writing about something that happened when she was twelve years old. One of her first comments reflected on the adults laughing at the irony of finding other survivors in a mall. Her character doesn't understand why, but I appreciated the nod to Dawn of the Dead (Divimax Edition). Also, "Popcorn" has become "Will," which I found interesting; if not for his strong will to live, he wouldn't have survived the movie theater or prison traumas. Of course, Milton continues to round up zombies, and Jack, Sarah, Tanya, Jonah, and even Fran are still active members of the community as well.

Zoey tells us what has happened to the central characters from the first book (but neither book is dependent on the other - both could function as stand-alones). Then the story shifts to Truman's point-of-view...Truman being a zombie who is starting to remember things, and uses a type-writer to write his own journal. Truman attempts to explain the changes with some of the zombies. All of it leads up to the discovery of the River Nation.

The complexity of the characters, and their relationships to one another, make this novel quite dramatic, but I would not call this book a horror or thriller novel just because it has zombies. The only thing that may be a problem for some readers is the switch in POV. It goes chapter by chapter, but there is no difference in the type-setting. Some people might not like it, but I found it easy to follow.

The trilogy continues with Dying to Live: Last Rites.

As always,
AstraDaemon