Review: Waking up dead...
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 18, 2013
This is a zombie novel, although Stevenson refers to them as Animates, most people would identify them as zombies.  First and foremost these aren't your shuffling, mindless, brain eating zombies that you're familiar with from George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead, and every movie and TV show that has copied him ever since.  Stevenson's Animates are normal functioning people who just happen to be dead.  Animates can still think, and they still have feelings, but they do have blue skin, and look pretty dead.  The world around the Animates is filled with magic.  There are Users, who are very similar to witches, who are the ones who raise Animates, and have a varying level of powers and abilities.  There are Vampires who come from space and caused all the magic to be there in the first place.  And there are AI creatures, which for the uninitiated is Artificial Intelligence machines who more or less think on their own and have their own personalities.This novel revolves around Pete, a man who wakes up as an Animate after being stabbed by a girl he picked up in a bar.  Now most Animates have a User who raises them for the purpose of 'Using" them as a slave, but Pete wakes up alone, which puts him on a quest to avoid being enslaved by a user.  Like all of Stevenson's novels this one is based in Scotland, but at one point runs off to Las Vegas, and takes some pretty wild turns.  As you're following Pete's adventure you get wrapped up in the relationships and personalties of the characters, because that's what Stevenson really does best, she infuses her characters with those kind of personalities that the reader can identify with, people you can point at and say I know a person like that, which is what good writers do, and when you can relate to the characters it makes reading about their various predicaments that much more engaging.Now this novel may not be for everyone because it can get pretty graphic in places, with some bloody descriptions, some very adult language, and more than a few references to sexual situations.  So if your easily offended by any of that you might want to avoid this book.  But if none of that stuff bugs you, and you want to read a very entertaining spin on the Zombie/Animate genre, please check this book out.