Passing Strange by Daniel Waters
Karen DeSonne has passed as normal her whole life, even though she was just that, “passing.” She never has been a normal girl, not even when she was alive. Even though she has had to “live” with the consequences of her actions, she seems to never learn from them. Here she is a differently biotic being and making the same mistakes as before she killed herself. The only problem is now she is the only zombie that can help her other dead friends. The undead have been forced into hiding and the only way to get them out of their hole is to find the person that really has been doing all the horrible things that the zombie’s are being blamed for. New regulations have the zombies in hiding and it is up to Karen to figure out who is framing them, even if that means dating the biggest anti-zombie zealot Pete Martinsburg. She will have to unravel what’s going on before it’s forever too late.
I have been looking forward to this book for a long time. I wrote down the day that it was going to come out and that morning I went straight to Books A Million to pick up my copy. I was excited to see what was going on with the characters that I had gotten to know through Generation Dead and Kiss of Life. But my main feeling after finishing Passing Strange was disappointment. I just wasn’t as involved in Karen’s story as I was in Phoebe’s. Changing main characters within a series is a risky idea, and I’m not sure that he should have taken that risk. I know exactly why Waters did it, it’s because there was no action with Phoebe, all the action was with the dead, not the living, but somehow it did not translate into the third book as well as I would have liked.
The ending of this book sucked, it all of a sudden became a story to her lost love, her lesbian best friend, WTH??? It just got weird and I didn’t like the change that it made. If he wanted it to be like that, make the entire series like that, a story to Monica, but you can’t just change all of the rules at the end of the book, I want a refund!
Waters also needs to reconsider his editor. I found multiple typing errors in the book. I remember finding them in the other book as well. If a mistake was brought to my attention in my first book, I could possibly forgive it and hope that it has multiple printings so I could rewrite, but in my second? I would fire him so fast his head would spin. If I was an editor, I would read the book I was getting paid for at least 3 times. But, if an author is editing it himself, I think that is very unwise, there is no way you are going to find what another set of eyes will. Sorry, just a pet peeve of mine, I’ll get over it.
So, what did you think, have you read this series? What are your thoughts? Thanks for reading, leave a comment!
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