Justina Ireland’s “Dread Nation” is a story about identity. About truth. About the way we shape our own stories, be they personal or national. And it’s a story about kick-arse young women fighting their way out of a zombie apocalypse set a few years after the American civil war.
Jane, the protagonist, is, to use an overly used descriptor, fierce. She’s a young woman at the top of her game, and that game is killing off the restless dead. Blades, unarmed combat, crossbows - she is a swift and efficient killer. But at the same time she’s a young woman, with a penchant for talking before thinking, and a disdain for compromise. There’s a fragile arrogance there, which clashes with the harsh treatment she receives at her..lets call it an educational establishment.
Because this is an alternate America, where the dead began to rise from the battlefields of the civil war. Where the question of slavery was answered by the tearing jaws and ravening hunger of walking corpses, and where reunification and reconstruction was the only alternative to extinction. So we see a tenuously United States, where the south is heavily fortified urban centres, linked by patrolled corridors. Where plantation workers are nominally free, but the howling death waits outside the barbed wire fences for those who might complain that what was promised isn’t delivered. A society which is at war within and without. The text does a brilliant job of showing us the claustrophobia and paranoia of southern cities, the need to feel like there can be a new normal, against the backdrop of hugely disruptive social change. The glitz and glamour, the stately opulence of dances and coming-outs is ion stark contrast to the staggering moans of the unquiet dead, whose relentless march against the living is met with equal parts violence, restrictive social measures, and outright denial. The double talk, the “fake news” muttering sof politicians, the rise of populism, echo from the story into our world, and are all the more powerful thereby. This is a society which is sick, facing a plague that comes with blood already stained between its teeth.
And part of that sickness is the sort of school which educates Jane. It’s a combat school. One where young women of certain ethnicities and extractions can be sent, to gain an education, to better themselves. But their roles are set out for them - as bodyguards to the wealthy, as guardians of privilege against the hungry teeth that challenge it. They may be better off, but still aren’t able to decide their own path. Equality is still a distant star, even as the girls of the combat schools are expected to die for their patrons.
Jane is one of the best at what she does, ready to go out into the world and kick arse. But she has other needs as well. Quieter parts of her past are simmering, soon to boil over, and the reader will be taken along with her, as she struggles against the power structures and expectations that seek to enclose her, and decide who she wants to be in the face of her own demons. It’s easy to cheer Jane as she beheads a shambling corpse, metaphorically or literally. And the shadow and tragedies living beneath the surfacer add hidden edges of complexity to her integrity and searing anger. Jane is a heroine, no doubt. Tossed in the dark sea of circumstance, we can root for her to triumph.
And the story...well, it’s a good one. Jane faces off against hordes of the undead. Against racists and murderers, liars and powerful men with a hidden agenda. She’s a young woman finding herself, and she’s finding herself with a bloody weapon in each hand, with whip-crack dialog, with a quick mind and a smart mouth. The story shows us adventure, excitement, and a rage against the machine which will keep you turning pages through the night.Check it out!
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