Generation Dead by Daniel Waters

Generation Dead by Daniel Waters

First in the Generation Dead series

4.5 stars

Phoebe Kendall is your typical high school Goth girl. She wears the clothes, the makeup, listens to “Goth” music, and loves black. She and her BFF, Margi, have a common bond when it comes to all things black and combat boots. Her best guy friend is Adam (who is finally realizing that he is in love with her and of course Phoebe is completely oblivious to this). Now she has mixed feelings toward a guy… but he’s not just any guy. He’s a zombie! Teenagers all around the U.S. have been sprouting out of graves and morgues, coming back to life. The catch is these zombies aren’t after your brains they just want to be treated like they are still alive. It’s refreshing to find a zombie book. Every now and then I need a break from vampires and werewolves for zombies or faeries or even witches. A friend of mine from school recommended this book to me and she was raving for a whole four minutes about how good it was and we have similar tastes so I decided that it was worth the shot. I then find out that my neighbor owned this book and she let me borrow it. Me being the book lover I am when I borrow books from people I try to read them as quickly as possible because I hate being separated from my books and I’m sure people feel the same. Giving Generation Dead a chance was a great idea. This book is supposed to be paranormal, but I felt that it touched on an important issue we face at least once in our life, discrimination. A big part of this book was the discrimination against zombies. They were constantly called names, pushed around, harassed, rejected from groups and clubs. This book properly executed a touchy subject in a light way. The book focused mainly on Phoebe and Adam. Phoebe and Adam are childhood friends and Adam is starting to realize he has feelings for Phoebe that go beyond friendship. They both had alternating POVs, which I’ll touch on my thoughts later. There was another POV, from Pete, one of the meanest guys in school. I’ll talk about thoughts on POVS in character sections. The writing isn’t the best writing, but it’s easy to read and light.


The main female character is Phoebe. Phoebe is supposed to be the star of this novel, but she seems to get just as much spotlight as even minor characters do. Phoebe was hard to connect to at times, but I still liked her character and thought she had an interesting voice. Phoebe wants peace between the zombies and people, but she realizes that it’s easier said than done. I don’t think Phoebe knows what she wants when it comes to boys. I felt that she loved Adam and Tommy only has friends. I know they are supposed to be her love interests, but it’s hard for me to believe she could end up with either of these boys.


Kick-Butt Heroine Scale: 8


The main male characters are Adam and Tommy. Adam gets his own POV and I didn’t like him at first, but as the story progressed and he became more accepting of zombies and broke away from what everyone else thought and became his own person I started to like him a lot more. He’s a great guy but it takes a while to realize that. Tommy is the zombie boy. I liked Tommy just as much as I like Adam. I think he’s a great character and I want to find out more about him because I feel like there’s still more to him. The discrimination he faced in this novel was heartbreaking. I like both of these boys and if I had to choose who Phoebe ended up with in the end I’d say neither because I like them and don’t think they need to face more heartbreak or unfairness.


Swoon Worthy Scale: Adam- 8.5 Tommy-8.5 


The Villain- Pete is the villain of this story and he gets his own POV. I love when villains get their own POV and I love even more when you don’t know what their plans are for evil. A villain POV in YA is rare, at least to me it is become I haven’t come across it often. Pete is a truly complex character. I hate him so much, but at the same time I want him to be happy. The one girl Pete loved more than anything died around the time that the zombies started to rise and he hoped she would rise too. Of course you can guess that didn’t happen and then that’s pretty much where his hate for zombies stemmed. Pete was already a bully and I think he’ll always be one, but he is very discriminative towards zombies. Pete is a character that makes you think about what can cause such hate towards a race, religion, or disorder. He is the perfect villain for this story.


Villain Scale: 8
Margi is Phoebe’s best friend and she annoyed me a lot, but I eventually started to like her more than I originally had. Karen and Colette were two zombies that were mentioned a lot in this novel. Karen was cool and I look forward to getting to know her in upcoming books and Colette is Phoebe and Margi’s best friend. I think she should’ve played a bigger role than she did. I felt she didn’t get to shine like she should’ve.

Character Scale: 9

This was a great novel and I feel like the only thing that really made it lack the five start rating was the lack of character depth. I think there could’ve been more. I did enjoy the characters, but I also feel they were lacking. The problems talked about in this novel are well done and should be taken into consideration. Overall I enjoyed Generation Dead and that ending left me wanting to know what happens next.

Cover Thoughts: I like the cover. It’s not a girl in a dress, yes she’s in a cheer uniform, but I feel like it fits the story in a way. The cover is well done.