Where can you turn when you've run out of Options?
What card can you play when the deck's stacked against you?
Is there any hope in a world of the lost?
B Smith has reached the end...
So after 4 years, 7 months, 28 days (or 1701 days). I am finally here with a review of the final book of the Zom-B series (I have review every book but one because I forgot I hadn't reviewed till months later. I went to Florida. I miss Florida). It's hard to review this book without refering to the rest of the series, so like always I presume you have read the last 11 books or don't care about spoilers (hell, maybe you even want them).
Reading this book, the thought popped into my head, would have done the child bride thing if B had been male? Would we have gotten an child groom then? It probably would have been treated the same, a fourteen year old flirting with a hundred old something. This series started by messing with expectation of gender, but feel like B had to be a girl or female. I'm not saying Shan is sexist, if anything it's do with society sexism. Just the child bride thing and B being forced into the oddest mother role ever. Shan never really addresses sexism in the series outside of B's gender being a twist at the start. It's just something to think about when writing/reading. Yeah, it's stated it's not sexual. But still fucking creepy. In terms of horror it the most scariest thing in the whole series. The zombies and the forced gore just seem laughable next to it. Actually,that part was just dumb.
Everything is finally reveal for the most part, I still had random plot thoughts, one of the big problem with this book and the rest of the ending books is there's this rush to remind the reader of these characters we've only spent two or three books with and then have abandoned for six books in between. So they've just became names and B hasn't thought about them since the last time she seen them. Mainly because everyone B actually cared about is dead, so named characters do die but if you're read all the other books you're be desensitised to their deaths because all the more important characters are all gone. Basically, Shan has had B with no reason to live for the past three books. If the book were paced better or maybe read them back to back (if someone done/does that tell me if you feel closer to the characters that are left at the end) it could work. Twelve Books was too many for this story and not good enough job is done to make them interesting as standalones as the series goes on.
This book has a preachy speech at the end about taking better care of the planet and each other on a globe scale. I am millennial, so I'm dead inside due to knowing how fucked over my generation is and how fucked over the future one will be as things are only getting worse. However, kinda undermines the world series where you spell out what is wrong with humanity as whole and blaming the individual is how we end up with ableist banning of straws instead of pressuring corporations to dispose of their waste appropriately. Hell, it might come into law soon.
I did really like the first book, I guess I still do. Shan tried to rise a lot important subjects in this series: racists, corruption and paedophile but it's probably ruined. Having read them all and made it through them all, I would say give up when you feel like it. Walk away then. There was a point where I think the books become more of a chore to read, in the hope of plot, than enjoyable. I know children/middle grade books do have repetitive formats but this series didn't actually have that. So much of it is B fucking around and I don't think we get plot stuff or world development every book.
Overall, I give this book 3/5 stars for fucking up everything. This isn't really a series I can recommend as whole, the last book in the series wasn't satisfying. It was fine. It's been so dragged out that there's no impacted and that's a problem. I feel like I've wasted money and time with these books so not fun. Because I don't care anymore.
