In this new America, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Education Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead.
But there are also opportunities—and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It's a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society’s expectations.
But that’s not a life Jane wants. Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston's School of Combat in Baltimore, Jane is set on returning to her Kentucky home and doesn’t pay much mind to the politics of the eastern cities, with their talk of returning America to the glory of its days before the dead rose.
But 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 read this book for Halloween, as it has zombies. This one was purchased from the thrift store a while back. Bookstagram informed me that a side character is ace, which made me happy. Part of the reason I picked this book above my other spooky reads was because I wasn't ready to let Ace Week go.
Anyway, WHEW THIS BOOK. It was so gory and horrifying and suspenseful and amazing. While it does take place in an alternate timeline, the racism and inequality of the Reconstruction South feels like it rang true (obviously I was not alive then but I'm guessing it was like that). It's really saying something when the racism is scarier than the zombies. The zombies themselves are pretty standard; the only unique qualities are that their eyes turn yellow, and the newly turned are faster and stronger than the longer-undead ones. I don't consume a lot of zombie media, but that was new to me. There was a line in the book about white people claiming certain people of color had been bitten in order to enslave them, in an echo of the 13th amendment loophole. There were parts of this that were hard to read and very sad (zombies attacking children etc., the kind of racism that you already know to expect).
I liked Jane, although I found her impulsivity and inability to keep her mouth shut annoying. You'd think a Black girl raised in the mid- to late-1800s would know when not to mouth off, even if she was raised by a white mother who coddled her and didn't believe in corporate punishment for Black workers. She was pretty badass though. Katherine, Jane's classmate in the finishing school, begins as an annoying tattling prig, but due to circumstances that bring them together, grows on Jane and us. She's the ace character, and due to her lack of interest in relationships, I read her as aroace. There's a fun surprise as to another character's LGBTQ+ identity. There's also a Black smoothtalking conman and nice white scientist for Jane to have sparks with. One of the more interesting characters was Mr. Redfern, a Native American badass and morally gray character who is only in the first half of the book. I hope we see him again in the sequel, which I can't wait to read.
Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: October 31
From: Savers thrift store
Status: giving away eventually
Cover notes: I really like this cover. "Jane" with her sickles in front of the American flag? Perfection. My only quibble is that she seems to be wearing an Edwardian dress and the book clearly takes place in 1880 or so.
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