Death of a Saint

by Lily Herne

I read the first Mall Rats book, Deadlands, about a year ago and I remember enjoying it. When I started Death of a Saint, my mind was hazy about what happened in the first book. But as the story progressed, I began to remember a small portion of what went down in Deadlands.

For this review, I'm going to break down the aspects of this book:

The Setting
Most dystopian/post-apocalyptic novels are set in America, but the Mall Rats series is set in South Africa (which was really cool!). As a South African, I was easily able to understand the places that were being described and the references and satire that was seen through-out the novel. The road trip that the Mall Rats went on allowed me to fully comprehend the instability and destruction that the zombie apocalypse had caused.

The Zombie Aspect
As I have probably mentioned before, I hate horror and I'm not a huge fan of zombie stories. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the original concept of the what the zombies are, what they do, how people become zombies and the politics and Guardians involved in their creation. It was interesting and kept me hooked.

The Characters
The Mall Rats series has a diverse group of characters (people of different races, sexual orientations, languages and behavior) which is extremely rare in the world of fiction. I also enjoyed meeting the Mall Rats again. Ash, Ginger, Saint and Lele act as one huge happy family with their shares of ups and downs. They also meet many new characters, good and bad, along the way. And while I do support team Lashle (Ash and Lele), I felt as though Ash behaved like a total jerk towards Lele and that really annoyed me. But I did enjoy learning about his past.

The Point of View
Death of a Saint is told from Lele and Saint's POV. I admire the strength and smarts of Lele and Saint, but their POV's was done poorly. Their POV's are told in alternating chapters, and I understood why Saint's POV was necessary. But Lele and Saints POV was exactly the same. Every time I would have to page back to see whose POV the chapter was from, I would get extremely confused.

All in all, Death of a Saint was a great book with cool characters, an original zombie concept, a interesting setting,plenty of twists and turns and an ending that killed me! ... I actually feel like picking up another Zombie book!