Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The year is 1876, and there’s something strange and deadly loose in Philadelphia…
Ain’t that the truth!
In Something Strange and Deadly we meet Eleanor Fitt. Her brother is missing and her family is just barely scraping by so her mother wants to marry her off to the first wealthy man …. oh yeah… and the dead are rising!
Someone is controlling this army of dead and she is convinced they have her brother after receiving a note from one of the zombies written by her brother.
Eleanor must work with the Spirit Hunters to find out who is wreaking havoc on the city and still maintain the decorum a lady of her stature is required in order to marry well and save her family.
Dennard has weaved elements of the Steampunk genre with zombies and she did an incredible job. It took me a little bit to get into it… neither zombies or steampunk are typically my thing, but I found myself really liking Eleanor. She was the perfect balance of intelligent, strong, stubborn, witty and feisty and many times I found myself thinking she was more mature than her sixteen years.
The Spirit Hunters, Daniel, Jie and Joseph are a wonderful addition to the cast of characters that Dennard has created. I really loved Daniel, even when he was being a douche to Eleanor so that’s saying something.
Something else to note, while there are hints of romance to this book, it does not monopolize the plot. It’s not about who she’s interested in and how they get together – I really loved that this book revolved more around the mystery of who was doing this and why.
The zombies… or animated corpses or.. IDK is that the same thing? Who Cares… I loved this spin on the zombie genre. The Necromancer, the person who controls these corpses, has reasons for doing what they are doing… all of which I’m not going to spill! LOL I mean… I kind of figured out pretty early on, but it didn’t ruin anything for me.
Dennard perfectly develops the characters and relationships in this tale and at the end of the book you’ll be turning the page looking for more. I’m really looking forward to see what happens in the next book!
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