The Side Table

Title: Dread Nation

Author: Justina Ireland

Published: 2018

Genre: YA Dystopian

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Pages: 451

Summary:

Jane McKeene is a young mixed raced girl who has grown up in a world where zombies started to rise from the dead during the Battle of Gettysburg, quickly spreading across the country. For the past three years, Jane has been training to become an Attendant; a bodyguard and companion to the elite socialites with the sole task of keeping them safe from the flesh eating hoards. The past few years had seen fewer attacks in the state of Maryland but not everything is as it seems.

Opinion:

I actually don’t like dystopian novels. Especially ones with zombies. (Any other monster I can handle but zombies creep me out for some reason.) I find them depressing and not the kind of escape from reality I’m generally looking for. There are a few that I enjoy; ones that tell me a fantastic story I can’t resist. Some of them even have zombies in it like this one. This story, however, was not one I will add to that list.

            I picked up the book because the premise sounded interesting. How could I resist zombies rising up at the battle of Gettysburg, a very well known battle that had been a heavy staple in my middle school education? I was expecting a lot of zombie attacks and the solving of a mystery. Truthfully, I did think of the movie Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The summary led me to believe that I would be reading an American kind of version of those circumstances. It did, to a point, but the writing just didn’t capture me. And I really wanted to enjoy it all. But I never finished the book, I’m sad to say. I got halfway through the book before I stopped. There didn’t seem to be anything to the story that pulled me through to the end.

            The characters had a lot of potential but I didn’t connect with any of them. Jane, the main character, gave me an interesting view point but it seemed so stagnant the further in I read. There didn’t seem to be a change in her personality at all and that bothered me. It wasn’t just here, though. There wasn’t a lot of change in any of the characters. I don’t know if I missed something but I didn’t really see growth in them or any of their possible complexity beyond a few scenes here and there. Most of them came off as stereotypes of bad guys with no real reason. Sure, it adds to the realistic feel of a limited narrator dealing with everything happening to them, but that got old very quickly. It was hard to really care about them at all.

            The build up of the story, too, seemed odd. There was a mystery at the beginning but it was solved way too easily and then the characters were shuffled off to a different story arc that was supposed to tie in to the first half but the transition seemed half-assed and anti-climatic. Maybe it was due to the limited narration of Jane, who is telling this story so can’t really be trusted too much, but I needed more. It felt like I was reading the outline of a book than an actual story. More than once I was questioning why I was reading this and what the point of the story was.

            But not everything is as negative as I’m making it out to be. I like history and a lot of what Ireland uses in her story for a historic basis was something I studied for quite a while. She refers to a government act that had blacks and Native Americans taken from their homes and sent to schools. In her book, she makes the schools places where they learn how to kill zombies. In real life, however, they were schools to turn the Native Americans into ‘civilized white men’. It’s a fascinating piece of history and I liked how Ireland twisted those events around, along with how things were during and after the Civil war. Twisted history is an amazing genre and can be quite entertaining. That she thought of this twist and researched it, making it very closely to what was used in her book, took a lot of creativity. 

            I also enjoyed that the voice of the story was from a girl who didn’t mind telling the reader how things were for this time period. She doesn’t sugarcoat things and even calls the other characters out on their attitudes; attitudes that were most definitely flourishing in this society. It’s an honest black voice that I’d like to see a bit more of if there was more character development. 

Recommend:

Well, I can’t personally recommend this to anyone. Despite the props I lovingly give to the setting and voice of this story, I had high hopes and the book didn’t match them. But this is all my opinion, remember, and not everyone reads the same way I do or even likes the same things I like. If you loved this book, I’m glad you found a story to love, regardless of what others think about it. Please let the author know how much you enjoyed it. This just wasn’t my cup of tea.

If you’ve read the book, what did you think of it? How does it rank with you and what you like? I’d love to hear more.