Handling the Undead
3.0 Stars
1-29-2016

A neatly written and quickly paced book about several thousand recently dead Norwegians coming back to life. The process seems to have happened through some sort of mystical mis-filing. The newly risen are alive but mostly inert, and they act as a mirror with which to reflect society.

On the plus side, the author rarely goes where the standard zombie cliches might lead. The book is mostly non-violent and I felt like standard zombie tropes were actively avoided. At one point the story seems to be entering a more standard zombie story, only for the narration to completely veer away from that thread. It is kind of the anti-World-War-Z. Similarly, the author thinks about the details and less common aspects of a zombie story. How do you dig an unliving out of a grave, how do you clean and care for them? Can they be re-habilitated, re-taught? What would the event be like for people in all the different configurations of loss, mothers who have lost children, wives who have lost husbands, husbands who have lost wives. How does that intersect with religion, with government, and with the press? The author has a consistent knack for thinking about details and overlooked things that the zombie genre usually skips over.

On the downside, the cosmology of the story is all kinds of dumb. :)