Review by Paul Mannering
Blue is the
perfect zombie novel, for readers who hate zombie novels. It is a book with clear influences from
zombie classics like Max Brookes’ World
War Z (not to be confused with the Brad Pitt film of the same title) and it
delivers a humanising element to zombies reminiscent of Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion. What Blue doesn’t do is create
something that is greater than these influencing elements.
Wehinger has created the first book in what is clearly
intended to be at least a trilogy, with a young adult market in mind. Blue promises “romance, fear and a good
dose of blood and gore.” The romance is delivered quite well. It’s sweet and
innocent and adolescent. Betrothals occur between distant settlements and
children must wait several years before reaching an age where they can do more
than just write to their future spouse.
The fear is subjective. Children, who enjoy a level of
scares found in a Disney film, are likely to find it delightfully chilling.
Like a Disney epic, the blood and gore mostly happens off camera. The ravening hordes of undead are deadly but
they are barely sketched. When people are killed by zombies the descriptions
are very sanitised and avoid causing upset to the target audience.
With her background in nursing, Wehinger sprinkles one of
the combined stories with medical terminology, without giving it a lot of
explanation. I’ve also studied nursing, so I know what she means by homeostasis.
I’m not sure why she felt it necessary to use it so much as a term when the
rest of the story was lacking any real details.
Technically, Blue is
competently written. There are moments of really nice prose. However, the
chosen style, multiple POV’s and shifts between first and 3rd
person, and very brief scenes from each
of the protagonists, keep the reader out of the story. This prevents us from
really connecting with anyone of the characters, who mostly lacked depth. Much
of the story was skimmed over, with the brief encounters with each character in
turn and a time frame of 62 years for the book, keeping things light. At times
it felt more like reading the notes for a novel, rather than a novel itself.
The real action finally occurs in the last 20 pages, far too late to salvage
the book from its gentle ramble through the post-apocalyptic world.
This is a book you should read if you enjoyed Twilight, and think zombies are icky,
but would like to read a gentle YA romance with some aspects of implied horror.
Random House NZ $24.99
Random House NZ $24.99
About the reviewer:
Paul Mannering is a
Wellington based author of the Australian zombie epic, Tankbread (Permuted
Press, 2013) and many horror and speculative fiction short stories. As well as
being co-founder of the award winning BrokenSea Audio Productions audio drama
group. He has edited the Tales From The Bell Club anthology for
Knightwatch Press and the forthcoming Fat Zombie anthology for Permuted
Press. Paul's first speculative fiction novel Engines of Empathy is
scheduled for publication by Paper Road Press in April, 2014.
3 comments:
This is a fricking horrible idea and I hope it dies in the remaINDER BINES.
Thank you Paul for taking the time to read Blue.
'Shamefully I think I enjoyed this book as much as my teenager! The multiple POVs and characters gave different perspectives which I found interesting to the story and as a reader. It was brave to do on her first novel and perhaps risky, but I found Wehinger's play with words and formats really forward and intriguing. It will be interesting to see how she develops as a writer.'
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