Review - The Reapers Are the Angels by Alden Bell (Tor)

The Reapers Are The Angels by Alden Bell
Published by Tor
Hardback - 302 pages
Published 
Review copy given by Pan Macmillan

The Reapers Are The Angels is a post apocalyptic novel that follows Temple, a teenager who was born after the zombie apocalypse occurred. Alone and traveling America, Temple seeks brief solace wherever she can find it, moving on before the 'meatskins' or the people become too much for her. After killing man in one of the safe zones, Temple is on the run from the vengeful arm of the murdered man's brother. Temple soon finds out that the one thing worse than sharing a world with the dead is having to share it with the living.

Bell has an unusual writing style. The entire thing is written in the present tense, so there's a definite sense of unease as you're in the action (or the suspense) with Temple as she travels. The lack of punctuation in the dialogue is another feature I've not come across before (apparently this style is similar to The Road, another post apocalyptic novel). For the most part it adds to the pace of the novel, never letting up and building the tension, but on occasions it can stick out as your try to figure out who's saying what, which brings you out of the story.

Plot is not a major feature of this novel. It is set out more as Temple's journey, and her experiences and interactions along the way. In this, Bell puts all of the focus in driving his characters rather than driving the story. The characters define the story rather than the other way around.

Temple is a very likable character; one that you sympathize with rather than identify. Having been brought into this zombie infested world, all she knows is crumbling buildings and killing to survive. Because of this, she is very practical and mature beyond her years, but she still has an innocence that marvels at the little miracles that lay in the centre of the chaos. The supporting characters are satisfyingly complex yet feature briefly enough in Temple's life that they don't slow down the book. This is both a good and a bad thing, since they flit in and our of her life too quickly to properly identify with them.

Bell's world is typical post apocalyptic. The desolation is well written, not so much in the world building but in the experiences through Temple's eyes. The loneliness that occurs on the road is well felt, which Temple attempts to rectify with her brief encounters with other humans, and her 'adopting' Maury later on in the novel. There are lulls during the course of the maelstrom that fill the reader with a sense of calm, but also of impending dread.

As my first post apocalyptic fiction novel, The Reapers Are the Angels was a great introduction. It's made me want to branch out and read mroe genres of its type, something I shied away from for a while. Within its bleak exterior can be found the innocence of childhood that is rapidly taken away as Temple has to deal with a much more dangerous thing than the meatskins that inhabit her world. Highly recommended as a novel that defies convention and sets for itself a compelling character driven journey against the desolation and solitude of this new world.