Sunday, December 28, 2014

Review of Through the Zombie Glass by Gena Showalter

Review of Gena Showalter's White Rabbit Chronicles: Through the Zombie Glass
Release Date: July 29th, 2014

Synopsis as found on Amazon.com:

Zombies stalk the night.

Forget blood and brains. These monsters hunger for human souls.

Sadly, they've got mine…

Alice Bell has lost so much. Family. Friends. A home. She thought she had nothing else to give. She was wrong.

After a new zombie attack, strange things begin to happen to her. Mirrors come to life, and the whispers of the dead assault her ears. But the worst? A terrible darkness blooms inside her, urging her to do very wicked things.

She's never needed her team of zombie slayers more, but ultra bad-boy Cole Holland, the leader and her boyfriend, suddenly withdraws from her…from everyone. Now, with her best friend, Kat, at her side, Ali must kill the zombies, uncover Cole's secret and learn to fight the darkness.

But the clock is ticking…and if she fails at a single task, they're all doomed.


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Sequels can sometimes be a big let down when you become a huge fan of its predecessor. You can read a book over and over waiting on the next to be released hoping that the author depicts their character in the fashion you want them to be. In the case of Alice in Zombieland, I wasn't the biggest fan. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book. I am a lover of classic tales retold in a new updated way. Unfortunately for me, there were hardly any correlation to Alice in Wonderland beyond the name "Alice Bell" and the fact that when the zombies attack, she sees a cloud shaped like a White Rabbit. 

The zombies are also not your typical zombies... these feed off of the human spirit instead of brains. I love cheesy zombie movies, The Walking Dead, any good zombie book that comes across my path, so I've read and seen a lot of different kinds of zombies. So that book got a plus for giving me something I had never seen before.

Through the Zombie Glass continues in the same way the first book left off. There is a lot of teenage angst, a lot of anger, fighting... to the point of sometimes repetitive ideas. I enjoy a lot of the characters, but I wish their further development beyond fighting, making up, and sexual desires came to the forefront of the story. I love the strength of Ali's best friend Kat, while she fights the disease that is eating away at her kidneys and am very happy with how Showalter depicts her.

I find Cole to be an intriguing character, but the sequel was not as good to him as I'd wished. He was as jealous as the first book, but for all the strength you see in him as a Zombie Slayer, he sure does quickly run from their relationship at the first sign of trouble. He seems very whiney at times and angry at others. I'm unsure if his character is supposed to seem bipolar, but he does come off that way.

I will be interested to see how Showalter ends her story in The Queen of Zombie Hearts, which was released in September of this year. I will be reading some other book before I get to it, but make sure to check back for my review on the conclusion of this story.

If you would like to check out some other books I really enjoyed on similar subject matter, pick up the following... they were incredible stories:

Marissa Meyer - The Lunar Chronicles: Cinder
Carrie Ryan - The Forest of Hands & Teeth
Anna Sheehan - A Long, Long Sleep

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