The Burning World by Isaac Marion: Review

R is recovering from death.

He’s learning how to breathe, how to speak, how to be human, one clumsy step at a time. He doesn’t remember his old life and he doesn’t want to. He’s building a new one with Julie.

But his old life remembers him. The plague has another host far more dangerous than the Dead. It’s coming to return the world to the good old days of stability and control and the strong eating the weak, and stopping it will require a frightening journey into the surreal wastelands of America—and the shadowy basement of R’s mind.

 

It’s taken years for us to get a sequel to Warm Bodies, but it was worth the wait. This book feels very different than the first book—more adult somehow (Julie turns 20 during the book, but it’s more the tone of the book that I’m referring to than the ages of the characters). In this sequel, R is learning how to be human again, and struggling against remembering his past life. He doesn’t want to dwell on the past. He just wants to move forward with Julie and help the other zombies crawl back to the world of the living. But the past won’t completely let him go, and his avoidance is making it harder for him to re-humanize. Plus, Julie and R learn that there are sinister forces at work in their world—forces that will derail the progress they’ve made if they let it.

What Fed My Addiction:

• Becoming human. I was engrossed with R’s struggle to become fully human again. His body and mind are slowly coming awake, but he doesn’t have full control—it’s as if he’s still partially dead. They actually refer to the different states of being a zombie in that way—there are those who are still completely Dead, those who have a spark of life, those who are approaching being human again, and a few who are nearly there! R is focused on waking up and on becoming a part of the human world (being accepted by it is a whole other matter). He’s there emotionally, but his body and mind are sluggish—not quite ready yet. I was fascinated with the zombies’ struggle for humanity.
• Dark times. While the first book felt surprisingly light (for a zombie novel), this second book gets a bit grittier and darker. While R is struggling to gain his humanity, in some ways Julie is losing hers—and her hope. Nothing is working out the way she’d hoped—the zombies aren’t all coming back to life and flourishing, and the humans aren’t accepting the possibility of change. When things start to go awry, they go very awry, and Julie crosses lines she never thought she’d cross (and that R never thought she’d cross). The world is dangerous, and Julie has to become dangerous to survive in it.
• The writing style. It’s been a while since I read the first book, but I don’t remember being so captivated by the writing. Marion’s style seems more poetic and philosophical in this book—to go along with R’s burgeoning humanity.
• Revelations. Throughout the book we slowly learn more and more about who R was before he became a zombie. I have to confess that I suspected a lot of it very early on, but there were definitely many surprising details.

What Left Me Hungry for More:

• The collective “we.” Some sections of the book are narrated by a sort of mysterious “we.” These parts seemed even more poetic, filled with library metaphors that seemed to symbolize a depository of humanity or a collective consciousness. I never quite fully understood who we was, but I think it’s supposed to be the human consciousnesses that have been suppressed by the zombies. R thinks of his past-life human soul (for lack of a better way to describe it) as a man in the basement. R doesn’t want to let him out because he doesn’t want to dwell on who he was before. So, I kind of got the impression that the we that narrated is a sort of collection of those human souls, waiting to impart knowledge to the zombies. They could (kind of) communicate with the zombies … I don’t know. If it seems like I’m not explaining it very well, that’s because I didn’t 100% understand it myself. And while contemplating it is mentally stimulating, during my reading my confusion sometimes pulled me out of the story a bit. (Plus, sometimes the library metaphors and the poetic language bordered on being too much for me.)

So, for me, this sequel was actually better than the first book. I look forward to finding out where Marion takes us with the next installment! I give this one 4/5 Stars.

***Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. No other compensation was given and all opinions are my own.***

About the Author

Isaac Marion grew up in the mossy depths of the Pacific Northwest, where he worked as a heating installer, a security guard, and a visitation supervisor for foster children before publishing his debut novel in 2010. Warm Bodies became a New York Times bestseller and inspired a major film adaptation. It has been translated into twenty-five languages. Isaac lives in Seattle with his cat, Watson, writing fiction and music and taking pictures of everything.

   

Related Posts

• Related Posts
• By Isaac Marion

Multicultural Children’s Book Day!

ARC Review – The Iron Traitor (The

The Truth About Happily Ever After by Ka

Review – Starcursed by Nandini Baj

Review: Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

Review: The New Hunger by Isaac Marion