A steampunk novel that lost its steam What a frustrating book! I so wanted to love it. It had so many good elements to it. However, somehow, the book lost its way and could not find its way back again!The GOOD Bram GriswoldZombie, soldier, and overall nice guy. He was the source of many of my favorite lines in the book. He was charming, respectful, and he was the guy that all parents dreamed that their loving daughter would find… minus the fact that he was a zombie.Nora DearlyAn unconventional girl in an unconventional world. She was a tough, high-spirited, quick to learn, quick to sass girl that charmed me enough to make me want to cheer for her. I loved her loyalty to her friends and her sassy mouth.The "other" zombiesYou might notice that the “good” in this book is showing a pattern. It was the characters. All the characters..good or bad…were well written and convincing. I liked the zombies even the “bad” zombies. However, here, I’m talking about the zombie characters, their personalities, not the fact that they were zombies. In truth, their zombieness (I think I "stole" this word from Bonnie since she used it in her review and she's brilliant so..) is irrelevant in this book. Let me explain (look down at the bad for my explanation).The BAD The ZombiesYes, yes, I know. Zombies again. So the zombies are good and bad? Yes. But how the hell do I explain this. Ok. So, the zombie character was great but the fact that the zombies were really zombies wasn’t. The author didn’t really do the entire zombie thing like she could have. I’m not asking for more ripping, shredding, blood and guts but just more of a “OH #@$#%” instead of “Oh cool, they are zombies” type of attitude.In the beginning, the author did it right. For example, one of my favorite lines from the beginning of the book…"They were men. They looked like men, at least -human- but like people who had been dead for months, years, in all stages of decay- flesh hanging limply off limbs, bones exposed..."Sounds like a zombie right? However, later, when other people first run into these same so-called zombies, their descriptions are far less remarkable, even borderline boring. It almost seemed like the author forgot she started with a zombie book. The Ever Changing POV'sOh my god. This is what killed this book. Forget zombies. They are harmless compared to the horrible POV switches in this book. What is worse, it wasn’t needed. The author could have left all but Bram and Nora’s story out. That is it.The WorldThis is just too much of a good thing. Dystopian, Steampunk, Horror, YA. I swear the author wrote the character’s story and filled in everything afterwards. It did start off good, but it was clearly a case of biting off more than you can chew.OVERALL I liked the characters and that is it. I won’t continue with the series.
