Review: Dearly, Departed

Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel
Publisher: Del Rey
Publication Date: October 18th 2011
Pages: 470
Copy: Hardcover
Source: Library
Genre: Dystopian, Zombies
Goodreads

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.

I love the background that has been put in place for the setting of the story and how Habel incorporated the Victorian styles of clothing and manners in a future setting with futuristic technology. The setting was really well out together and it was very obvious that Habel had a lot of knowledge about the era.

The background given for "The Laz," or the reason that there are people becoming "Zombies" was very well put together and seemed very realistic in the story. In the story, "The Laz" is a disuse passed through bodily fluids that makes a person die and then come back alive in a zombie like from.

The story is told in multiple points of view, including Nora, Bram, Wolfe, Pam, and Victor. When books are told in so many points of view I usually only find one point of view that I really like to follow but in this story I didn't find any of the character's points of view any less enjoyable than the others, though personally I preferred Bram and Nora's story.

 Spoiler Section May Contain information that the reader may not want to know before reading the book.

I loved the romance between Nora and Bram and how, because of the Victorian setting the romance was very subtle and old fashioned between the two of the characters.