The Disability Book Archive

[ID: A book cover. The background is a light black. The figures of two young black women are in the foreground. They are wearing 19th-century-era clothing. The woman on the left has dark black braided hair and is wearing a beige suit. She has a sword in her right hand and blood down her lower right side. The woman on the right has curly brown hair and is wearing a long white dress and matching hat.
White text at the top of the cover reads “Sequel to the New York Times bestseller Dread Nation”. “Dread Nation” is in caps.
The title “Deathless Divide” is written in the centre of the cover, in white, styled italics.
The author’s name “Justina Ireland” is at the bottom of the cover in white caps. /end]

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Content Warning:

• Racism
• Death
• Child Death
• Violence
• Murder
• Slavery
• Torture
• Mutilation
• Gore
• Human Experimentation

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Summary:

The sequel to Dread Nation is a journey of revenge and salvation across a divided America.

After the fall of Summerland, Jane McKeene hoped her life would get simpler: Get out of town, stay alive, and head west to California to find her mother.

But nothing is easy when you’re a girl trained in putting down the restless dead, and a devastating loss on the road to a protected village called Nicodermus has Jane questioning everything she thought she knew about surviving in 1880’s America.

What’s more, this safe haven is not what it appears – as Jane discovers when she sees familiar faces from Summerland amid this new society. Caught between mysteries and lies, the undead, and her own inner demons, Jane soon finds herself on a dark path of blood and violence that threatens to consume her.

But she won’t be in it alone.

Katherine Deveraux never expected to be allied with Jane McKeene. But after the hell she has endured, she knows friends are hard to come by – and that Jane needs her, too, whether Jane wants to admit it or not.

Watching Jane’s back, however, is more than she bargained for, and when they both reach a breaking point, it’s up to Katherine to keep hope alive – even as she begins to fear that there is no happily-ever-after for girls like her.

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Notes:

This is the second book in the Dread Nation duology.

This book is set in America during the 1880s.

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Archivist Comments:

I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for historical zombie fiction. A friend got me hooked on that Kdrama Kingdom a while back and I’ve had a soft spot ever since. Which is funny because I genuinely find zombie hordes to be quite frightening in terms of horror figures.

Okay, so some information I’ve found out is: the novel is dual POV, and there is a black bisexual MC and a white asexual MC. Some people seem to have taken some issue with the representation of amputees in this book, and the representation of some of the other POC characters is apparently a bit iffy in some areas so be aware of that. Some people have also said that the pacing seems a bit off, but I saw someone say that the author does start the book with a note that she didn’t know where to go with the story after the first book.

That being said, a lot of people have praised the concept of the book. It’s definitely an interesting mix of genres- historical fiction meets zombie fiction- and I have seen a few people mention that the author has clearly done some research into the period she is presenting.

The reviews are very much a mixed bag. Things that some people hated are loved by others and vice versa.

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