Review : Undeadly by Michele Vail

Posted by on November 20, 2012 1:52 pm in 3.5 stars reads | 1 comment

Undeadly by Michele Vail
Pages : 272
Genre : YA, Paranormal
Series : The Reaper Diaries, Book 1
My Rating : 3,5/5

What it’s about :

Being a necromancer, Molly has always been a bit different from most of her peers. Working for her father with her sister at Big Al’s Zomporium, she has always been quite certain of what life had in store for her.

But on her sixteenth birthday, everything changes. First, there’s the dream with Anubis; then, that little incident at her birthday party where her wannabe boyfriend Rick accidentally dies; quickly followed by her attempt to rescue him by putting most of his soul back into his body. Oops.

Immediately after, Molly gets shipped off to a prestigious necromancers academy. There, Molly gets to learn about her new abilities, but also about her own past, all while an enemy is taking the lives of students around the school. All she has to do now, is stay out of trouble…

My Thoughts :

I wasn’t expecting it, but I was pleasantly surprised with Undeadly. It was a quick, entertaining read that didn’t suffer from an overpowering mythology. Molly had a bit of a sarcastic tone of voice, and her narration felt a lot like she is talking directly to you, which also makes it an easy reading. I also liked how the book had these little quotes at the start of every chapter, coming either from a character or a necromancer book. Nice touch!

As far as the mythology goes, I liked it. It was a nice touch to what could have been, otherwise, very ordinary. It’s sprinkled through the story, too, so there’s no heavy history lesson about Egyptian mythology. The book had its own zombie lore, which is always a plus, and I liked that the story took place in a parallel version of our world, where while not everyone can be a necromancer, people are aware of it. There are enslaved zombies and spirits, new laws, technology to keep your ghosts in check, etc.

Two things I liked less : Molly is so unbelievably naive. I wanted her to wake up and question the people around her, or at least their intentions. Why would she go running into the night with the girl who has been mean to her from the start, just because she asked her to? It didn’t really make sense to me, not more than the fact that Molly, who supposedly has more zombie knowledge than I do, couldn’t see her “boyfriend” Rick wasn’t completely right. The second thing was the romance. I just couldn’t feel the tension between Molly and Rath. It felt forced, and I couldn’t care less about him.

Oh the other hand, I liked Molly’s new friends. We barely got a glance of them here, but I do hope they’ll become Molly’s true companions in her adventure, rather than being part of the background. They seemed to have different personalities, and considering she had just met them, to be very loyal too. There’s also a lot more left to be discovered about Molly’s family. I’m very curious about this, and I also hope we get to see more of her sister in the next book.

In the end, I liked Undeadly. It had its faults, yes, but while it didn’t blow my mind, it did entertain me. I’ll be looking forward to reading the sequel when it comes out. If you want to give it a try, Undeadly is hitting the shelves today!


Similar Reading

My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent

Playing with death and life, and dealing with the consequences? It would be hard not to compare to Rachel Vincent’s fantastic Soulscreamers series, which I love.

While my preference clearly goes to Vincent’s very original take on banshees, Undeadly still has time to grow into a story with more depth. Yet, if you are looking to explore the limits of life and death and what can be done with the soul in such paranormal universes, be sure to give My Soul to Take a try, too.

Thanks to Harlequin Teen for generously providing a digital copy of Undeadly.

 

 

 

1 Comment

  1. Oh it sounds dark and fun! I love anything with zombies!

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

%d bloggers like this: