three stars - look at me!! i am right in the middle of the road with this one!! watch out for traffic, karen!!! 
 i wanted to read this as soon as it came out. i think i bought it the week we got it into the store. but, you know how i roll, this was just sitting around for ages and ages in a stack by the door. and then i heard that it was amaaaazing. and then i heard that it was terrrrrible. and etc etc. 
 and it wasn't until zombie month 2011 that i managed to see for my damn self. 
 and for me, it was good but i have no choice but to rate it in terms of the other zombie books i have read thus far. it was way better than dust and frail, but not as good as the reapers are the angels or raising stony mayhall. so we gotta go with a solid and respectable three. fair is fair, after all. 
 i loved the characters in this book, i gotta say. george and shaun are both such damaged and driven people. and i was so relieved that grant didn't go where it looked like she wanted to go with their characters. she was toeing the line there for a while, and i was rolling my eyes and giving her warnings, but she never toppled over into 'ick' territory, and that made ME feel like the creep for seeing things that weren't there. i shake my fist at you, ms. grant, but appreciate that you made their relationship so exceptional without making it exceptionally gross. 
 also great is the world building. it is dense with details and mostly reasonable; on the one hand the virus' transmission or "activation" is really cool. and not something i have seen before. so - nicely done there. on the other hand - does anyone remember the dandy warhols today, in 2011?? i don't think anyone in 2040 will be remembering them. there is nostalgia, and then there is just foolishness. but other than that, i enjoyed the details that were original and specific to this particular zombie world. that is always my favorite part of these kinds of books: what the author is contributing to the mythology that is unique to their story. 
 the only reason i didn't like this as much as the two books that i really loved is because it is more of a traditional zombie story - an action story with political cover-ups and a central mystery and numerous action sequences. the books i found particularly great were more tricksy in the way they used the zombies. but that doesn't mean i am not going to read the second one. or the e-book short stories. 
 i am curious to see where she takes the story, now that THE THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN THIS BOOK HAVE HAPPENED. is my version of dancing around spoilers. all i know is that i liked this book, and even though i had to write some damn paper in the middle of it, which made my house look like this for a week or so: 
 (which looks totally cluttered, but is actually very carefully arranged.), i still was very interested in getting back to this book, and it was easy to fall back into its world when i needed a break from academia. i am going to read the second part later in the week, and then i guess wait patiently for the third part. 
 as a bonus, here is a picture of my cat in a drawer. 
 man, i have lost the knack for writing book reports. i all dizzy from learning. who wants to read a paper about readers' advisory?