GENERATION DEAD by Daniel Waters

The popularity of zombies is on the rise. In fact, the fans of the walking dead may be soon encroaching on the number one spot held by vampires. I don’t know why this is happening, it’s as mysterious as the reasons for the zombies climbing from their graves to start searching for a brain buffet in all the movies (and yeah, yeah, I get that some kind of gas was released in the Living Dead movies and in Raccoon City, but come on. Really?).

Zombies moved back into horror fiction with a much more sure step than they’ve had in a long time. But now they’re launching into teen romance fiction. In a way. Generation Dead by Daniel Waters is a mixed bag, and I’m going to be all over the place while describing my reading experience for you. It just refuses to lie down and die to be reborn into a familiar zombie novel of movie tradition.

The cover of the dead cheerleader with blackened eyes seized me at once. I mean, once you get that image in your head, it’s not going to easily go away. Neither will the romantic triangle between Phoebe, Adam, and Tommy, the “differently biotic” boy Phoebe falls for.

Phoebe was one of the Goth girls at school. She enjoyed being different, and the dressed-in-black thing really worked for her. Looking like the living dead really worked for her. It even earned her the name Scarypants from Pete, the novel’s villain of sorts. Of course, the look really lost its appeal when dead kids started showing up and coming back to school. The author does an excellent job of catching a teen girl’s feelings and confusion throughout the novel. Phoebe comes to life on the pages almost at once.

Adam is the football jock and Phoebe’s next door friend. As it happens, he’s just discovering that the friendship he’s always had with Phoebe runs much deeper. That realization is stymied by his own shyness, the fact that he is a member of the Pain Crew on the football team and he shouldn’t go for Goth girls, and Phoebe’s sudden crush on Tommy Williams.

Tommy is a pioneering wonder among the zombies. He’s articulate and he writes, blogs even. He also goes out for the football team and causes all kinds of tension in the school and the city.

The story revolves around these three characters and how they sort out their lives. However, the author throws in great support characters like Margi, Phoebe’s best friend, and others.

Teens these days seem to be almost shockproof to so many changes in their lives. If the living dead did claw their way from their graves and decide to go to school instead of the brain buffet, I would be very surprised if teens didn’t act exactly as Waters portrays them in this novel. They split almost immediately into groups that supported the zombies and those that stood against. But mostly they were curious.

I could make a lot of comparisons to cultural differences being played out in the pages, of Waters building his zombies up to comment on race, religion, and economics – the usual dividers among populations, but I won’t. I don’t think he wants the book to go that deeply into global problems. I believe he just wants to talk about the teen world, get into their heads, and tell a story they’ll have a ball with wondering “what-if”?

I also have to admit that you’re going to have to push yourself to get through the first fifty pages or so. The book progresses slowly but that’s so the characters and all their complications can be set into place. Once that’s done, Waters engages fully with the story and keeps things moving.

This is a book for the teens. Some parents of teens or those who want a trip back through the teenage years will enjoy it as well, but the junior high and high school readers should eat this one up. There’s no real explanation for why the zombies came back to life, or why only American teens were affected, and I was disappointed slightly in that. But the characters are real, facing situations with genuine emotion, and I believe that the target audience is going to feel that and enjoy the read.