Review: Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel

Title: Dearly, Departed (Gone with the Respiration #1)
Author: Lia Habel
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal
Heat Index: 1 out of 5
Release Date: October 18th, 2011
Word/Page Count: 470 pages
Format: NetGalley

Love can never die.

Love conquers all, so they say. But can Cupid’s arrow pierce the hearts of the living and the dead—or rather, the undead? Can a proper young Victorian lady find true love in the arms of a dashing zombie?

The year is 2195. The place is New Victoria—a high-tech nation modeled on the manners, mores, and fashions of an antique era. A teenager in high society, Nora Dearly is far more interested in military history and her country’s political unrest than in tea parties and debutante balls. But after her beloved parents die, Nora is left at the mercy of her domineering aunt, a social-climbing spendthrift who has squandered the family fortune and now plans to marry her niece off for money. For Nora, no fate could be more horrible—until she’s nearly kidnapped by an army of walking corpses.

But fate is just getting started with Nora. Catapulted from her world of drawing-room civility, she’s suddenly gunning down ravenous zombies alongside mysterious black-clad commandos and confronting “The Laz,” a fatal virus that raises the dead—and hell along with them. Hardly ideal circumstances. Then Nora meets Bram Griswold, a young soldier who is brave, handsome, noble . . . and dead. But as is the case with the rest of his special undead unit, luck and modern science have enabled Bram to hold on to his mind, his manners, and his body parts. And when his bond of trust with Nora turns to tenderness, there’s no turning back. Eventually, they know, the disease will win, separating the star-crossed lovers forever. But until then, beating or not, their hearts will have what they desire.

In Dearly, Departed, romance meets walking-dead thriller, spawning a madly imaginative novel of rip-roaring adventure, spine-tingling suspense, and macabre comedy that forever redefines the concept of undying love.

Poena’s Review:

I loved this story. I hated how it was told.


Gah! What an awesome universe. Creative, fun, all kinds of awesomesauce, even the cover rocks. The universe is amazing. Romantic-cyber-steampunk-zombie-horror-YA-adventure. I really adored this universe. Can't squee about it enough. How can you not LOVE parasol wielding zombie killers?

As a reader who tends to shun YA (I know there are terrific stories out there but honestly, I'm not the target audience and find most YA protagonists annoying), Dearly, Departed worked on many levels for me. The universe building was terrific. I bought it hook, line and sinker. As a fan of Historical Romances this cyberpunkish universe was so easily accessible. All of the characters were likeable, their motivations understandable, their actions believable.

Even when Nora acted like a spoiled twit, it made sense and it wasn't played up as a shallow way to progress the plot. She was pretty and smart and so far from perfect that her plight was interesting and engaging. Bram was terrific. What an awesome zombie romantic hero (though Dr. Samedi gives him a run for his money).

This story should be the "A", READ IT NOW, bundle of fun.

But ultimately, I am bitterly disappointed .

You might be thinking, 'How can you give it a B and be bitterly disappointed?' I am not disappointed with the story or characters or plot, or writing. But what kills this story is the way that it is told: shifting 1st povs. Alternating. First. Person. Point. Of. View. So practically every chapter is a different 'I'.

Now, I am not a fan of 1st POV; I admit that. It's not my favorite narrative voice but I have enjoyed several books with it. I am vehemently against alternating, multiple (5? here?) 1st POVs. It is completely disorienting, confusing and jarring despite naming each chapter. The story progresses at such a pace that the during middle, I would jump into a chapter and have to backtrack to see whose POV I was in.

Multiple 1st POVs is HORRID. Terrible. A weak way to tell a terrifically entertaining story. It made it difficult to read and completely slowed what should have been an awesome pace. I know that there is this idea that 1st POV is a more 'intimate' way of telling the story but here it is completely distracting and unnecessary. Just as I was connecting with Nora, the POV would shift. The same with Bram. And the frustrating part is that all the shifting was not necessary to tell the story. Or it could have been much more palatable to do it in 3rd pov.

Basically, this is a terrific, well written story, poorly told. Will I read the sequel? Not if it is alternating 1st POVs, regardless of how much I adored the parasol wielding zombie killing babes in corsets.

Manai’s Review:

If it hadn't been for the multiple POVs in first person, it would have been perfect.

Pros:
-Really unique and engaging story. World building is charming and fascinating, characters are pretty decent, too.
-Debutante-esque girls who wind up kicking ass
-Nifty zombie science that doesn't gloss over the fact that it's zombies
-Even the angsty and sometimes annoying bits (mostly with regards to the heroine, Nora), were clearly angsty/annoying because they were appropriate to the characters, the setting/circumstance, and Nora's age. And it wasn't overkill - it was played off quite realistically (as realistic as could be expected in this fantastic fictional world!).

Cons:
-While the writing was solid and clean, it was 1st person POV. This is automatically a turn-off for me, but I got past it, especially since it's so common and it really is a personal preference. However, it's varying viewpoints 1st POV. Meaning, more than two. More like... five, I think? It's kept relatively tidy by the fact that each chapter specifies by name whose head we're in. But I couldn't really see anywhere in the whole story why this was at all necessary. Further, at times it was actually confusing and I had to flip back and check to see whose POV I was in, because the tone didn't really change much from one characters POV to another. I really felt that the whole story would have been more cohesive (and enjoyable) in 3rd person POV.

Despite the one big "con" and the bits where Nora was being a flawed 17-year-old (yay for not being a total Mary Sue!), Ultimately, I couldn't put this one down. Thank you, Ms. Habel, for breaking an unfortunate 1-, 2-, and 3-star streak in my reading!