“The word remission means absolution. It suggests a fault from which you must be pardoned, an amnesty from your sickness, a hint of blame attached to the disease.”

-Leigh Radford

I was lucky to get my hands on an ARC of this book, which comes out in July.

Zombie books are often tough for me–I’m often sick of the undead by the halfway point. I think most of the good subversions have been done already, and getting much father from the concept makes it a different kind of story with a zombie label slapped over the top of it. Luckily, One Yellow Eye manages to stay pretty traditional, zombie-wise, without making me unenthused by the undead.

One Yellow Eye is a story about zombies, but it’s also a story about love, and the things we’ll do for it. It’s not romantic by any means–aside from a few backstory scenes–but the love between Kesta and her husband is what drives every scene. I was particularly moved by the second-to-last chapter, which rang true in so many ways as someone who has seen a lot of long disease and slow death–both in my own life and strangers–in my lifetime.

Of course, you also wouldn’t have a zombie outbreak story without lies and crime. Not only did I appreciate the level of scientific detail that went into the scenes with Kesta’s work and the government programs, but it was fun to watch the main character be ultimately in the right but go about it with dubious and selfish motivations. It made Kesta feel a lot more real, and I was truly rooting for her.

If you’re a specialist or hyperfixated on a particular niche area of science, or if you pick up on a certain clue, you might guess the cause of the zombie outbreak. I did not, and I thought it was super cool and creative, and not an origin story I’d ever seen before, in zombie media or otherwise. But you’ll get no spoilers from me!

I appreciated Radford’s writing–which was at times academic, at times poetic in equal measure–for knowing when to draw attention to itself and when to get out of the way. Everything flowed, the dominos fell in the correct time, and I read all of One Yellow Eye in about three sittings. Highly recommend looking for this one when it hits shelves!