AfterLife Book Review

Let’s talk about zombies. Oh I’m sorry, the undead. No, I mean mortuis. What’s that last one again? I have been reading AfterLife by SP Cloward. 

If you haven’t guessed already this book is about the above. Or more specifically, one man’s journey of coming to terms with being undead. That person is Wes. Our story starts off with Wes perched on the edge of the roof of his apartment block, drinking up the courage to commit suicide. Anyway he thinks better off it and overdoses instead. 

He then wakes up the next morning feeling seriously ill and unable to talk. Things get a little scary for Wes after he goes to a clinic, only to be told that he is dead. Wes does a runner, ends up back at his flat and subsequently begins to decompose. A few days later he is collected by an organisation called AfterLife; a community of the undead. 

The organisation takes care of Wes and starts teaching him how to adapt to his new life, while also training him in self-defence. But the evil Atumra - a community of nasty undead people go after him when they learn that he has a unique gift. 

I liked this book. The author put a fresh spin on the zombie and vampire legends to create a unique premise. While Wes and his friends are undead and therefore cannot age, they are not indestructible. They consume energy off living people by a technique called ‘soul-syncing’. This cuts their victim’s life but allows the mortui repair their own body. 

Also the main characters are very likeable and the story gets off to a fast-paced start with a lot of dark humour. However, I felt the story began to falter about half way through and becomes a bit slow. Things do pick up again later on though. 

The dialogue was one thing that did really annoy me. A lot of the characters, save Wes and Seth, sound like robots when they talked. If they were not stating the obvious they were over explaining things. Do people really talk like that? Most don’t and it made a lot of the co-characters flat and boring.

AfterLife gets 6/10.