Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

[lightreads]

Dread Nation

3+/5 (don't @ me, I do what I want). Jane is a mixed race girl born to the mistress of a Kentucky plantation right about the time the Civil War was ended by the rise of the zombies. She is sent away to zombie combat school, and makes her way in an America torn by racism and the undead.

This is great, Jane is terrifying great, and her main female friendship is delightful. She is allowed to be sexual and violent and practical and also kind, which is a lot, but people are a lot. I do think the book does not quite hang together thematically. The zombies serve the function of linchpinning a different stripe of Jim crow, where freed blacks are forced to defend white safety with their lives, often being literally eaten alive for it. But all of that doesn't quite hook up with the strands of this book which are about passing – there are multiple characters who pass for white when they are not, and the book is really good at digging into the precariousness and terror of that. But the pieces of it don't quite come together. But I suspect later books in this series – of course it's a series – will be tighter and stronger.

Content notes: So much racism. Including racist violence, and a flashback to parent on child violence.