Reviews with content warning for Racism - Deathless Divide

I really wish I liked this book more than I actually did. Because there was so much cool stuff here! The setting itself is beatuifully executed: all the historical details merged seamlessly with the added element of zombies, and all that light shed on the kind of people history loves to forget. The cast of characters is wonderfully diverse and pretty much everyone gets a moment to shine. There are plenty of little scenes that absolutely beg to play out on a tv screen. I loved the inclusion of Katherine as a narrator in her own right; I feel her chapters added a lot to the story, especially in the first part when Jane is largely out of action and mostly gets to be heartbroken over at least two different people. I liked every single action sequence.

But at the same time, all this awesomeness just never clicked into a solid story for me. The pacing is super rocky. There's that entire first half where nothing much happens until the plot twist in the middle. There are two absolutely beautiful chapters at the beginning of the first half (seriously, my favorite in the whole book and possibly the whole series) that carry such promise about all the change that happened to the characters, and then the story starts to meander again. A lot of the really important events happen either entirely off-screen or are jumbled into something very short; meanwhile, what feels like merely connective tissue drags on for pages and pages. There are numerous plot threads, including some coming all the way from the first book, that are underdeveloped or left hanging.

I frequently react to novellas with, "I wish this was a full-scale novel." With this book, my reaction is the opposite: I wish this was a novella. Or a string of short stories. Maybe all those meaningful parts would shine brighter if they weren't bogged down in all the rockiness!

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lilacs_book_bower's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I really enjoyed the first book. Jane had such an engaging, funny voice, and she was really a character to root for. It is an intriguing alternate history, where zombies (called shamblers) rise from the dead on the battlefields of Gettysburg, and kill and bite/turn people. Black people are used as cannon fodder in the war against the dead, and young Black women can be trained to fight the dead and protect white women. In the sequel, after the town of Summerland falls to shamblers, Jane and her friends escape, but there is an immediate death that sends Jane into depression and on a quest for revenge (over a character that I did not think was remotely worth it, but love is weird). While the change in her character makes sense due to the plot, I really missed the old Jane's voice, and consequently didn't enjoy this book nearly as much. It didn't feel like there was a lot to this book, if that makes sense. On the plus side, we now have Katherine as a narrator, in addition to Jane, and I liked seeing her POV (and her ace rep). Katherine, and her loyalty to her best friend Jane, is the saving grace of this story. Ireland shows multiple races in the 1800s Western US and handles well the explanations of racism against Black people, and the stress that puts on them, just to survive. On the negative side, story lines feel half-fleshed out, characters that should interact don't, the pacing was uneven, and I'm not entirely comfortable with the way Ireland handled the discussion of the Chinese immigrants or the Native Americans. The book felt way too long for the amount of plot that actually happens. I was looking forward to this one, and unfortunately, I was disappointed.

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breesbookmark's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious tense

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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honuzbubbles's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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fyarae's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Really fantastic characters and a rich world that makes you really question the prejudices in today's society. Fantastic world building, a wonderful read. I just wish there was a coupling up at the end with two characters but I will survive.

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