Devils Unto Dust

by Emma Berquist

Keep together. Keep your eyes open. Keep your wits about you.

The desert is unkind in the best of times. And the decade since the Civil War has been anything but the best of times for Daisy Wilcox—call her Willie—and her family. This tense, heart-pounding alternate history about a young woman fighting to survive the unthinkable will keep fans of Westworld and The Walking Dead reading late into the night.

A horrifying sickness has spread across the West Texas desert. Infected people—shakes—attack the living, and the surviving towns are only as safe as their perimeter walls are strong. The state is all but quarantined from the rest of the country. Glory, Texas, is a near ghost town. Still, seventeen-year-old Willie has managed to keep her siblings safe, even after the sickness took their mother. But then her good-for-nothing father steals a fortune from one of the most merciless shake hunters in town, and Willie is left on the hook for his debt. With two young hunters as guides, Willie sets out across the desert to find her father. And the desert holds more dangers than just shakes.

This riveting debut novel blends True Grit with 28 Days Later for an unforgettable journey.

• ISBN13: 9780062642783
• Publish Date: 17 May 2018 (first published 10 April 2018)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 22 August 2023
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Greenwillow Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 496
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

[shannonmiz]

You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight

Let's just break this one down in a "yay versus nay" fashion, mostly because I said so.

The Stuff I Liked:

• The setting was pretty great. I mean, Western stuff is cool. And then you add this sickness, and undead humans, and yeah. That's as messy as you'd expect, especially when you're talking about a time when technology and life comforts are in their infancy. Basically, it ups the stakes at every turn while still seeming realistic.



• Willie is such a great protector- even when she doesn't want to be. Man, she's honest. Sometimes she wishes she didn't have to be responsible for her family, but she also loves them and cares for them wholly and completely. The family dynamic is definitely one of my favorite aspects of the book. 



• I love an adventure trip! I mean, I just do. People on a journey, especially in a life-or-death situation, just makes me excited. And I liked that the addition of zombies brought an extra level of fear for our characters.



• On that note, there was a lot of action on the trip. A pretty solid portion of the book takes place "on the road", and the stakes are high- both during the journey, and for the outcome. And there are a lot of harrowing decisions that the characters have to face, including a lot that will test their resolve to even accomplish their mission.



• I enjoyed the rapport the characters had together. The interactions with the brothers that Willie hired to help her, along with some other travelers, kept things light when they could otherwise have been very, very bleak.

The Stuff I Didn't:

• I did find parts of the story to be predictable. And that isn't always great when you are trying to be on an adventure, right?



• I like to know backstory, and I really don't fully get these "shakes". I mean, are they zombies? Are they say, zombie-adjacent? No idea. And I wanted to know, really.

Bottom Line: Quite atmospheric and definitely full of adventure and peril, this was a fun journey even if I may have guessed a few plot points along the way.

[limabean74]

I wasn't sure what I was expecting when I started this book. I am not a huge fan of zombies and I was a little nervous. I am very happy I read this book because it was not what I expected.

• Set in a Dystopian world, it has a sort of western feel to it. I can't remember if it ever gave a time frame out year but it seemed like it was set more in the future.


• I never experienced character build like this, it was really slow, the book almost revolved around the build of these characters.


• The Story is told in Willies (Daisy Wilcox) POV. You are seeing the entire book through her eyes and learning about each character from her. You learn a lot about her and it's progressive, so it happens over the entire length of the book.


• The Garrett Brothers and Willies brother Micah are traveling across the desert to find their father and bring him back to repay a debt that is making life for his kids worse than it is.


• The "shakes" are the zombies, they aren't in the book a lot but the fear of them jumps from the pages.


• The story is just a lot of walking and reflecting, explaining the surroundings and how Willie is feeling.


• It had a lot of twists and turns. One of the twists, ripped my heart out. I was shocked. This happens almost at the end. I was also not expecting a lot of what happened to happen. This book had me on the edge of my seat.

I think the reviews on this book are mixed but for me, I loved it. One of the best character build in a book and this story had me on the edge of my seat and I was finding it very hard to put down. Emma Berquist is a new to me author and one I plan to keep an eye on, because, I would love to read something else from her. Highly recommend in my opinion. I really enjoyed this

Thanks for stopping by to check out my review.

Have a great day and Happy Reading!

This review was originally posted on Because reading is better than real life