The Reapers Are the Angels

I was lucky enough to get a copy of The Reapers Are the Angels by Alden Bell from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program. I must say that I am very glad I did. Ever since I was a little kid and I first saw Night of the Living Dead, I've had fascination with zombies. The scarier the better.

This book, however, isn't scary. Despite having zombies in it, I wouldn't really classify it as horror.  That's okay though, because it's still a great book and who says zombies have to be horrifying? It's written entirely in the present tense, except for a few flashbacks, which normally annoys the hell out of me. That's okay too, because it's done in a way that I don't actually care about that. There are quite a few nit-picky concerns, like why is there still edible food in abandoned stores 20 years after a zombie apocalypse, and why is the power still on in so many places, and how is it so easy to find a working car, and why are the roads still passable instead of clogged with weeds and crumbling? That's okay, too, because the narrative is great enough that while I noticed these things, I was able to ignore them.

The only thing that I didn't like so much was the ending, which kind of came out of the blue, and in theme at least, kind of reminded me of the original ending to Brian Keene's The Rising, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I really like this book. a lot.