The thinking man's Zombie...

This is an intelligent take on the zombie theme where zombies or "second-lifers" as they are now known have been integrated into everyday life. In true zombie fashion they have a slow deliberate gait and don't tend to converse much! "She smiled at him, a shocking rictus of unholy perversity, exposing blackened gums and serrated teeth. Her tongue, the color of well-done meat, slithered behind wide dental gaps, and her gray hideous hand clutched her chest." As a man dies and is retrieved and returns he emerges as a zombie which has a detrimental effect on already strugging economies "Although not cannibals like movies had predicted, they were far from harmless. Once a month, like some kind of planetary menstrual cycle, the earth spits up thousands of new mouths to feed and left taxpayers to shoulder the burden, straining an already struggling economy." There is a wonderful list of characters including Stephen Lingk Pastor of Glory's Children Church, Monika Janus and her lover from a previous live Eric Cooper. Eric works for AdCom and they are losing consumer confidence resulting in advertising dollars being slashed at an alarming rate, they plan to target the "second life" market (who have a great fondness for burgers and whisky!) and to this end employ Monika Janus a newly reborn second lifer. Stephen Lingk has his own agenda and is attempting to communicate more deeply with the second-lifers "The hundreds of second-lifers tested with the SSA under Lingk's supervision had produced fewer than a dozen responses most of them garbled beyond recognition." Will Eric obtain some form of closure? Will second-lifers destroy human life as we know it? Will the Pastor reveal his true colours? I did enjoy this book and felt that the themes whilst intelligent (in order for second-lifers to be born someone has to die) and different did not always hold my attention and came to realize towards the end......I really did prefer the traditional evil, slow lumbering, zombie the true "walking dead"