Generation Dead by Daniel Waters

Title: Generation Dead
Author: Daniel Waters
Age Group: Teens
# of Pages: 392
My Rating: 2/5

The dead are coming back. Zombies. Except they are referred to as the "living impaired" or the "differently biotic". And apparently, this supernatural phenomenon is occurring only in the States and those who crawl out of their graves were once teenagers. They are not terrorizing the streets or eating people's limbs. Instead, they are trying to fit back into the society they once knew of. But can they be truly be accepted, as hard as they try to be humane?

All-goth Phoebe is in a school where there is a large number of the living impaired. She and her best friend Margi are trying to cope with the fact that their other best friend, Colette, died from a drowning accident. Now, she is one of the many undead kids.

Tommy is a handsome differently biotic person who Phoebe takes interest in. She finds him fascinating and wants to know about him. When he joins the school football team, he peaks her curiosity much more.

Adam has been Phoebe's friend since they were young. He recently discovers his feelings for her but only to find out that she is more keen on someone non-breathing instead. When Tommy joins his football team, troubles start to brew up. Many of the players, including the coach, are against having a living impaired person on their team. Should Adam ignore what some of his teammates are planning to do or stick up for some dead guy his crush likes?

Revolted by zombies, Pete is sick to know that he will have to play football with one. His love Julie never came back after she died, why should everyone else? He is determined to crush Tommy and all of his rotten friends. Even if it hurts those that are still alive, like Phoebe and the traitor, Adam.

With the dead among the living, there is no surprise that things can get a little nasty...

So, I have had this book for about a month. And some people might be like, "So what?". If you are a follower of my blog, you would know exactly what is wrong with this picture. I am a huge zombie fan and every other week, I would mention something zombie-related. Now, if I had a zombie book for a month and just finished it now, it tells you quite a bit.

Generation Dead has to be the slowest and most non-thrilling zombie story out there. Believe me, every three pages I kept checking to see how much I had left to read. One of the worst things a book could ever do is make the reader see when they would finish it. Not because they are afraid it is going to end, but when is it going to finally end!

The first thing I had an issue with was Phoebe and her whole goth get-up. I don't mind goths in general but it seems so uncalled for in this novel. Then again, it is the author's job to prove their audience wrong and make them love every concept they put down. Except this never happened. I couldn't bring myself to root for Phoebe in any situation because she was such a dull person who apparently likes writing emo poetry and wears only black. Tommy was just as boring but had some pretty killer writing skills and a pretty face. Pete simply had issues and needed a zombie to eat him up already. The only character I sorta liked was Adam because for a jock, he was a pretty good guy. Sadly, I found no character growing up toward the end. Isn't character development key to a good story?

For me, the most exciting parts were in the last two chapters and it didn't go beyond five or so pages. Throughout the whole novel, I wanted to stop reading altogether and torch it. I was bored to death and could not believe how many books I put off for my attempt to finish it (reason for the many manga reviews lately). But as a reviewer, I made it my policy to finish every book I ever started. For all I know, it could get better halfway. I don't want to compare, but it felt like I was reading Twilight all over again. Forbidden love between a living and non-living person with no real plot throughout 500 pages (but this one luckily had 100 pages less). It was slightly better than Twilight because the use of Mary-Sues was actually minimal but I could not bring myself to boost up the rating.

I think another frustrating point for me was when a dead Japanese guy was introduced. He was portrayed as someone who had a thing against the world. Can I scream now? This is more of a personal opinion but I am sick of having all the existing Asian male characters in my zombie stories dead and/or hate their life. The last zombie book killed off my favourite Korean guy too (see Soulless by Christopher Golden) but at least I loved it so much it that it got a perfect score. Adding this small point in the story made me feel insulted. There are already a rare number of Asian characters in the American YA fiction world so at least keep them until the very end. I think all zombie authors have a thing against Asian people, you know?

Generation Dead is not recommended for zombie fans unless you don't mind uneventful plots and non-Apocalypse scenes (then why would it even be a zombie book anymore?). But maybe Twilight fans would like this novel more than me.