the-knights-who-say-book:

Rating: ★★★★☆

Blurb: Years after the Civil War was derailed by the rising of the undead, Jane McKeene is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. But that’s not a life she wants. When families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies. And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems.

I avoid zombies as a rule, but this book is not to be avoided. And I’m a big fan of the way the zombies are handled in this book. They have a well-defined set of rules with just enough flexibility to make them interesting, and the story as a whole is not gory, but still dangerous enough to be exciting. That’s the sweet spot for me. I felt the tension and creepiness, but wasn’t turned off by excessive gruesomeness.

Jane is a great main character (I especially enjoy how each chapter begins with an excerpt of her lying outrageously in her letters to her mother). She’s smart and confident and funny. Kate, the next most important character, is introduced as the type of mean pretty girl who is usually the main character’s rival for no reason in lower-quality books books, and turns out to be much more nuanced. Watching her and Jane accept their need to stick together and help each other even though they’re very different people is really satisfying.

Jane also weaves her backstory from the home she was taken from into the main story, in little pieces that really grabbed my interest. The way she keeps vaguely eluding to the events of her past but only giving you the truth a little at a time is really well done, especially because of the dry humor of the book. I didn’t expect the backstory to end up having a plot twist of its own, or that it would hit so emotionally at the end.

I love the development of Jane becoming a leader in her own right, and the commentary this alternate history setting lends itself to. Seeing how Justina Ireland weaves in historical references and what actually happened after the Civil War to make her version of events fit in was really interesting. She takes the concept of the horrible boarding schools Native children were forced into in reality and expands it into a whole system that could have been formed by the real social mores of the time.

As for any flaws, I think the book is a little too slow at times (or maybe I was just too slow of a reader, getting distracted by other books), and I personally wasn’t invested in Jackson, another important character, at all. But overall I really enjoyed this book. Because I thought it was a standalone I was surprised that the ending leaves Jane on the edge of another adventure, but I will definitely be reading the sequel.