Devouring Books: Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

"I don't want to hear music, I don't want the sunrise to be pink. The world is a liar. Its ugliness is overwhelming; the scraps of beauty make it worse."

Way way back in February, the lovely Ellie read Warm Bodies and was a little bit enamoured with it. Because she wanted to discuss it with people (which, you know, is what we do here) and was really VERY enamoured with it, she sent me a copy in her lovely way of loveliness (I like people who send me books, can you tell?!) and... It's October and I've finally read it!

Yeah, I'm really bad at doing things. Leave me alone. 

But anyway. Read it I did, and let's just say that Ellie was not wrong to be enamoured by it. 

In this gif analogy, Warm Bodies is the bath water and I am the cat. And Ellie is the one who filled the bath. Where am I even going with this..?

Anyway. Warm Bodies, in case you haven't heard about it (IT'S BEEN A MOVIE, GUYS! WHO DOESN'T SEE MOVIES?!) is the story of R, a zombie who is just as bloodthirsty and brain hungry as all the other zombies but possibly with a few more thoughts and emotions than them, and his journey as he sort of kind of falls in love (as much as a zombie can) with a girl called Julie (R... and Julie. Hmmm.) and all these other things happen. Because I'm really being specific here.

Now, I honestly don't think I've read another book about zombies* so I can't really say what I'm about to say, but the first thing I really like about Warm Bodies is that it has it's own interesting twist on the whole zombie mythology. I think I've said before that I really like when vampire things (which I have a lot more experience of!) add to the whole mythology of vampires** and the twist on this is something that I don't think has been done before and it turns out to be very sweet and is the kind of thing that directly appeals to my nature and things.

No, of course I'm not going to tell you what it is. It's kind of the whole crux of the book, duh!

The next thing I really liked about Warm Bodies is that I reaaaaally liked the writing. Like, really really really liked. I'm told by people smarter than me (other bloggers, basically) that this is a YA book, and I guess it is (it's a bit teenage love-ish, not in a terrible way, but just oh well?) but in my overall experience those have not been so well written, and this is just... great. The sentences flew through my brain in a good way, and made me feel all the emotions and things. Not to the same intensity as, say, Tell The Wolves I'm Home or something, maybe, but still. EMOTIONS.***

Even more weird is that I enjoyed the writing in spite of the fact that it's written in first person present tense, which is normally my LEAST favourite in the world. But in Warm Bodies? It all made sense because for the zombies (or at least for R) there is no past they can remember, and no future they can think of that doesn't involve BRAINS. So, for me, it made complete sense that I was in R's head (because, hey, maybe the other zombies can't even think) and that we were in the present tense. But that doesn't mean that I'll tolerate it all the time... *looks sternly at authors*.

There were just so many little things I liked about Warm Bodies. The way that zombies eat brains not for nourishment, but to remember what it felt like to live and to have memories and whatnot, the way that an impending zombie apocalypse changes the people unaffected, making them crueller, taking away their dreams and turning them into people they don't even recognise anymore. Whilst R and Julie are really well drawn characters, some of the secondary ones are slightly less well developed, which is sort of fair enough considering R's really limited perspective, but Nora, who is not in the book long enough or verbally enough is really excellent and probably my favourite, even though I've had to make up a lot of her in my own head. I didn't really mind.

Basically. I really enjoyed Warm Bodies, in spite of (or maybe because of...) my zombie inexperience, and I especially enjoyed Isaac Marion's writing- in other words, I'd probably read his next book whatever it was about because yessir, you write nicely. I don't feel like I've been that convincing about why you should read this, so you should definitely read both Alley AND especially Kayleigh's reviews (Kayleigh is ALL about the zombies, and she thinks this was great. So, yeah) and they'll give you more reasons. Or just, you know, read it already and join the conversation. Yeah, I said it.


*I KNOW. Wait, has Stephen King done zombies..? *googles* Ok, he has, but I haven't read it yet
**That's ADD to, Stephenie Meyer. Not completely mess up.
***Which is pretty weird for a zombie novel, I guess.
"Memories you capture on purpose are always more vivid than the ones you pick up by accident." (p. 84)