Under control, of course, is a fragile concept. The well-to-do attend theater and lectures and even bask in electric light. Cities, like Baltimore, are up and running. That’s scary enough without zombies, frankly.īy the time Jane is old enough to be taken, there is hope that the zombies are under control. They were taught to be servants and told to be grateful for the opportunity.

Children were taken from their families and forced to assimilate into a WASP way of life. I feel like it would be irresponsible to note here that schools intended to indoctrinate Indigenous children were a very real thing. Things like taking black and Indigenous children from their families and placing them into schools designed to train them to fight the living dead. But there is also raging racism that leads the leaders of America to do horrifying, monstrous things. There is the grotesque living dead, of course. Outside of her family’s plantation, horrors abound. She has a fairly comfortable childhood, being raised by her mother and the other women on the plantation as an adored and willful child. Our main character is Jane McKeene, the black daughter of a plantation owner’s wife. What results is a dark, twisted, entertaining novel that is truer to reality than it should be.

Written by Justine Ireland and published in 2018, Dread Nation is an alternate-history horror novel that considers what our nation might have looked like if zombies had risen at the actual battle of Gettysburg. We’ve now entered the world of Dread Nation. But that it was also the start of a zombie apocalypse. Imagine if you will, a world in which the Battle of Gettysburg wasn’t just the end of the American Civil War. Without added context, AM is just a monster built by man, and Ted is its chronicler. There was enough mystery and intrigue to fill a novel’s length of work. This story seemed to hold much more than its word count allowed. While I found this to be an act-loosely supported by the more subtle examples of manipulations displayed-that’s still head cannon given the information in the story. However, are these bugs in his character, the correct narrative, or misconceptions built on ignorance? I can make assumptions but little feels supported from the text.ĪM was more the diabolical villain, almost cartoony in execution. As a first-person narrator, he’s allowed to have flaws like anyone else. I never felt I understood Ted, unsure how to read his sexism and criticism. While the writing was effective, it didn’t capture that charisma I found in “ Vic and Blood.” Harlan Ellison made a profession building upon the allure of cruel and often immoral individuals, but Ted lacked that allure which hinders the narrative as a whole.

Harlan ellison i have no mouth