Generation Dead by Daniel Waters

First published in 2008.

All over the country, a strange phenomenon is occurring. Some teenagers who die aren't staying dead. They are coming back to life, but they are no longer the same. Termed "living impaired" or "differently biotic," they are doing their best to blend into society again.

But the kids at Oakvale High don't want to take classes or eat in the cafeteria next to someone who isn't breathing. And there are no laws to protect the differently biotic from the people who want them to disappear - for good.

With her pale skin and goth wardrobe, Phoebe Kendall has never run with the popular crowd. But no one can believe it when she falls for Tommy Williams, the leader of the dead kids: not her best friend, Margi, and especially not her neighbor Adam, the star of the football team. Adam as realized that his feelings for Phoebe run much deeper than just friendship. He would do anything for her - but what if protecting Tommy is the one thing that would make her happy? (book flap blurb)

I like my fiction as stories, first and foremost. I read fiction so that I can escape from the world churning around me. 99.9% of the time, authors write with some kind of meaning in their writing, a lot of that is subconscious. A lot of fiction writers write the story first but, without helping it, some kind of theme will usually emerge from the fun. That's fine. What I don't like is when my fiction is really just a ruse to beat people about the head with a message they "should" be learning. That, to me, is not the purpose of fiction. Fiction is escapism. What fun is it to escape pressing matters and run into the arms of . . . pressing matters? Boo.

Yeah, I get it. Intolerance sucks. Idiocy sucks. Irrational thinking sucks. But why couldn't the story just be told instead of force-feeding the readers with the lesson of tolerance? People are people, no matter what their skin color is. And in this case, no matter what their pulse status is either. Ok. I get it. Stop stuffing it down my throat and just tell me the damn story. This aspect alone, of heavily infusing such an issue, really writing about an issue thinly veiled by a zombie story, really kept turning me off to the book. I just don't like being preached to. I really don't.

However . . .

I liked Pete's story. Not because he's a bastard but because there's more going on there than a love-in. He's probably the most dynamic human in the entire piece because he has this huge issue with Julie, this jealously that fuels him. It makes you wonder, "what if she were to come back? would he be alright then?" He's much more polarizing and much harder to figure out. You know what Adam's going to do. You know what Phoebe and Margi are going to do. You know what Tommy's going to do. But Pete . . . he could go berserk or he could punk out but what are his motivations? Is it because he hates zombies? Or because he's jealous because his love didn't come back like the rest of them? I absolutely love that dynamic about him, that polarizing effect of his personality. There is another side to him, the side that died with Julie but still rears up every once in a while. Him I'd like to follow around.

The end of the book was in and of itself redeeming. Not because of the actions of the characters but because we finally get catapulted inside the head of a dead kid and we finally get to see, even though it's just for a second, what they really think, how they feel and how they want to act. It's truly terrifying; being trapped inside your own body and not being able to act or say what your brain so desperately wants to do. There's a disconnect with a fully functioning brain. How horrible is that? That is what interests me.

This is where my science geek comes out. I get wrapped up in the nuances of situations like this. How are they not rotting? How did they come back? The brain controls muscle movement. If being dead means brain death, how are they able to move? Talk? Think? Play football? Love? Screw the story. Give me a book on just that and I'll be in heaven.

But at the end of the day, even though I fully understand the glaring message this book is sending, it's not the same, is it? The racial divide in this country is about skin color. Nothing more than varying degrees of pigmentation in the epidermis. This book is about regenerated corpses. They are dead. No heart beat. No brain activity (for you are not legally dead until you are declared brain dead). They died, have risen from the dead and are now walking around. Yes, I understand the parallels of the lack of understanding. The sub-humanizing of Africans during the slave trade were equal parts ignorance and intolerance. Had those slave masters been tolerant enough to understand, they would have been made less ignorant. But in an age where we fully understand that a homo sapien is a homo sapien regardless of what the outside looks like, and we have scientific proof to substantiate that, how can the irrationality of being freaked the fuck out about reanimated corpses walking around be somehow illogical and ignorant? They're the walking dead.

I love my best friend to death. But if she died and however long later appeared at my door, I wouldn't put it past myself to grab a shovel and start swinging. Why? BECAUSE SHE'S A REANIMATED CORPSE. There's a difference between an irrational fear and a rational fear. An irrational fear is being afraid of someone based solely on their skin color, especially in a day and age when we know better. A rational fear is being afraid of someone that just climbed out of their own grave. Yes, over time, when society learns the facts as to the whys and hows of the situation, the fear would subside but don't kid yourself to think too many people are going to have the first reactions of *hug* to someone that carries a legal death certificate, especially when the phenomena is just beginning. The bigger hurdle is moving beyond that initial knee jerk fear into the level of tolerance and eventual understanding. Some will be quicker to do it, yes, but I think nearly all will have the same intial reaction. I do get it. Same message as the color of skin but there's a big different between dark skin and no pulse.

Aside from all of that, I felt the storytelling was a big robotic at times and a lot of the dialogue was stilted, especially amongst the teenagers. The reoccurrence of "it is" in speech really bugged me. Such a small thing, I know, but how often do you say "it is" instead of "it's"? It's simple things like contractions that can make dialogue more realistic. They don't have to be all slanged up but the propriety of a lot of the conversations just didn't jive with my realism flow.

At the end of the day, this was one of those books that had enough in it to keep me reading to the end and has me intrigued to read the sequel. Kudos to Waters for using a unique turn to send a familiar message. It's not something I'm going to rush out and buy. I'll read it in my own time. But just the prospect of being able to read and see the story from behind the eyes of a zombie is far too good to resist. If you can get past the skull-smashing of the message 2x4 the novel has, it's a pretty decent read.