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The Reapers Are the Angels
by Alden Bell
This book has so much against it that it’s a miracle anyone picks it up at all. Firstly, I’ve learned the slow and painful lesson that you should avoid books with pretty covers, regardless of how many rave reviews it has. It’s cover-snobbery, only in reverse. Second, I hated hated hated The Road and had absolutely no desire to read a young adult version of that literary abomination. Third, I think I’m slowly burning out on zombies. Yes, they’re cool, and they’re the ultimate in terror because oh man how do you run from the dead when the dead is everywhere, and how do you kill something that in your mind is still human? But by the same token, they’re clichéd and I’m just… ready to move on to something besides zombies.
But I found myself drawn to this novel anyway, and I’m glad I got over those convictions enough to open it.
The book just grabbed me. It is rough, written in present tense with no quotation marks. But it worked for this one. It flowed, just like everything in this novel flowed. I found myself drawn into Temple’s world, seeing things through her eyes and finding new things to orient myself around, as she couldn’t read and had only vague ideas of where she was.
Temple is a fifteen year old girl who is on the run, both from a person and from the demons of her past. She is a child, but an adult all at the same time. She was born into a world where zombies (meatskins or slugs, actually; I don’t know that I specifically remember seeing the word “zombie” in this whole work more than a couple of times) are a way of life, and she has learned to accept them as just a part of her world—as one of God’s creatures—without fear, but she has learned that sometimes she has to do what she needs to in order to survive. Her story unfolds in a very believable way—you don’t see the world fall apart, it just is; you aren’t told what’s made her the way she is, you are shown over small snippets until the end.
Speaking of the end—the end of this novel? Frustrating and perfect all at once. It can’t be any other way, but God, I wanted to turn the page and see “smile, you’re on Candid Camera” or something like that.
So, I’ve gone on and on… things I liked about this book. I liked not knowing exactly where Temple was located. I loved her as a character—Temple is easily one of those characters that’s going to stick with me for a long time. In fact, I’d probably stay up all night thinking about Temple and the lesson that’s wrapped in between all the violence and gore in this book, if I hadn’t already been up all night the night before.
It’s literature. It’s marketed as young adult but this is one of those books that I have a really hard time shelving there. It’s literature. If this is the direction young adult would take, then I’d be happy with it.
Things I didn’t like about this novel… I’ve already mentioned that there aren’t quotation marks and that makes a novel rather hard to read at times. There are a few times when characters use French phrases and they’re deliberately misspelled (to sound phonetic, I suppose), and while this worked well to “put me” into Temple’s frame of mind, I also had to look at it a few times, reread it and figure out what it was supposed to say, and that pulls me out of the story and reminds me that I’m stuck in the real world and not in her world.
Overall, I thought this book was well-done and brilliant and I will definitely be reading it again.
But I found myself drawn to this novel anyway, and I’m glad I got over those convictions enough to open it.
The book just grabbed me. It is rough, written in present tense with no quotation marks. But it worked for this one. It flowed, just like everything in this novel flowed. I found myself drawn into Temple’s world, seeing things through her eyes and finding new things to orient myself around, as she couldn’t read and had only vague ideas of where she was.
Temple is a fifteen year old girl who is on the run, both from a person and from the demons of her past. She is a child, but an adult all at the same time. She was born into a world where zombies (meatskins or slugs, actually; I don’t know that I specifically remember seeing the word “zombie” in this whole work more than a couple of times) are a way of life, and she has learned to accept them as just a part of her world—as one of God’s creatures—without fear, but she has learned that sometimes she has to do what she needs to in order to survive. Her story unfolds in a very believable way—you don’t see the world fall apart, it just is; you aren’t told what’s made her the way she is, you are shown over small snippets until the end.
Speaking of the end—the end of this novel? Frustrating and perfect all at once. It can’t be any other way, but God, I wanted to turn the page and see “smile, you’re on Candid Camera” or something like that.
So, I’ve gone on and on… things I liked about this book. I liked not knowing exactly where Temple was located. I loved her as a character—Temple is easily one of those characters that’s going to stick with me for a long time. In fact, I’d probably stay up all night thinking about Temple and the lesson that’s wrapped in between all the violence and gore in this book, if I hadn’t already been up all night the night before.
It’s literature. It’s marketed as young adult but this is one of those books that I have a really hard time shelving there. It’s literature. If this is the direction young adult would take, then I’d be happy with it.
Things I didn’t like about this novel… I’ve already mentioned that there aren’t quotation marks and that makes a novel rather hard to read at times. There are a few times when characters use French phrases and they’re deliberately misspelled (to sound phonetic, I suppose), and while this worked well to “put me” into Temple’s frame of mind, I also had to look at it a few times, reread it and figure out what it was supposed to say, and that pulls me out of the story and reminds me that I’m stuck in the real world and not in her world.
Overall, I thought this book was well-done and brilliant and I will definitely be reading it again.