Dread Nation
The Dread Nation series, Book 1
Justina Ireland
Balzer + Bray
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Historical Fiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: When Jane McKeene was born, America was at war with itself, North fighting South... until the bodies of the dead rose on the battlefields and began feeding on the living, friend and foe alike. With the coming of the shamblers, as the undead came to be known, the War Between the States effectively ended in a draw, as the fight for survival became top priority. But while the matter of slavery was left undecided, some things never change, such as the tendency to expect colored people to fight and die in defense of the moneyed White elite and their comforts. Laws like the Native and Negro Education Act required all nonwhite children of a certain age to learn the art of combat, the better to defend against the shamblers who have taken over the countryside and completely swamped the Lost States of the Deep South... not to defend their own families or communities, but rather the cities and the families of the powerful.
As the daughter of a wealthy plantation mistress, Jane might have been able to avoid conscription (despite her dark skin, her mother's light as a lily and sharp as a rose thorn), but she longed to see the world beyond the fortified Rose Hill plantation, and would not shirk her patriotic duties. Thus she found herself enrolled at Miss Preston's School for Combat in Baltimore, among the top of her class. A certificate from Miss Preston's will enable her to find comfortable employment as an attendant for wealthy White women needing protection from shamblers (and predators of the living sort), far better prospects than many of her color could expect, though mostly she just wants to go back to her mother and help defend Rose Hill. But Jane soon learns that something's rotten in the city, a conspiracy that could doom Baltimore and the still-standing cities of the East... and what she learns might get her and her few friends killed.
REVIEW: Zombies meet the American Civil War (and the Old West) in Dread Nation, pitting a headstrong young woman against not only the hungry undead but the cultural and systemic corruption at the heart of even the "free" North, corruption that keeps spending the lives of the many (especially the nonwhite many) to preserve the illusion of normalcy, prosperity, and comfort for the few. Jane is born into a world remade by the rise of zombies, the start of a slow collapse that will inevitably claim the remaining enclaves of the East unless people adapt or manage to find a cure, yet still - as now - too much time and energy is diverted to clinging to old ways and old ideas and pretending the problem can be "managed" without significantly disrupting the lives of the most powerful (and the ones in the position to actually effect the changes society needs), choosing ignorance over a future where change and integration may threaten their stranglehold on civilization. This adds new dimensions to the sexism and racism that Jane and her fellow schoolmates have been coping with all their lives, and new urgency to the need to fight a system that would rather die and take humanity down with it than admit it's obsolete. By comparison, the zombies are almost innocuous as enemies go, refreshingly straightforward and far easier to behead. The other threats she discovers aren't nearly so clear-cut or easy to identify, so it's much easier for people to pretend they're not there at all.
Jane starts out a somewhat typical, if not unlikable, heroine, if one with a past complicated by mixed race ancestry in a world that can't even accept that all humans are the same species (arguments that reflect real-world twistings of science and religion that were particularly prominent historically among those seeking justification for their racism, and rationalizations to convince the powerless to stay on their knees before their "betters"). Even being the first, and potentially only, line of defense against undead monsters isn't enough for many White people to see her as a person. Still, she's determined to make her own way and be her own boss, as her mother was before her - plans that get derailed when she gets pulled into an investigation by an old acquaintance/ex-boyfriend, the petty criminal "Red Jack". If she thought she had things rough in Baltimore, what she finds after her investigations get her (and Jack and Katy, another Preston's student) exiled to a frontier town is ten times worse in every conceivable way. It's here that Judy finally learns the true depth of the corruption and the threat posed by her enemies, the world they intend to make, and it's here that she must determine whether to play along with the role laid out for her or fight back with everything she has. Fighting back, though, can lead to unintended consequences for her and those around her.
This is not a story prone to lulls or dragging, and though Judy and her friends aren't flawless, they're always pressing forward and don't linger on mistakes. Judy meets several other characters, most of them foes but a few potential friends, and navigates numerous complications. Some elements of the climax feel unsatisfactory, loose threads that were either forgotten or deliberately left dangling in the reader's face as enticement for a sequel that may or may not resolve them. On the whole, Dread Nation is an enjoyable, if occasionally dark, story.
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