On the one hand, Warm Bodies felt like a stand-alone story. The Burning World (2017), Isaac Marion’s sequel to his 2011 Romeo-and-Juliet inspired zombie tale, left me with mixed feelings. But are they escaping to a new life somewhere else, or running into the jaws of more trouble, or going on the attack against the forces of evil? And let’s not forget the innumerable zombies.

When R, Julie and their friends end up on the wrong side of Axiom, they go on the run with the somewhat reluctant help of Abram Kelvin, a renegade Axiom employee who is the older brother of Perry ― Julie’s old boyfriend who was eaten by R at the beginning of Warm Bodies. In fact, the Axiom people are insistent on it, smiling all the while, and willing to do almost anything to get their way. Axiom has weapons, helicopters and lots of very disturbing minions with plastic smiles, ready to take control and restore order. If this weren’t difficult enough, a new group, Axiom Corporation, shows up in force at the stadium where R and Julie live. It’s a spectrum: Living, Nearly Living, Mostly Dead, All Dead, with unsettlingly fluidity between them. The recovery of the other zombies that have taken over America is equally tentative, one small step at a time, with many zombies not recovering at all, and others backsliding. His body is still stiff and clumsy, and his memory of his prior life is still a blank to him (in fact, he’s not at all sure he wants to remember his prior life). But not so fast: becoming fully human again after years of zombie-hood isn’t as quick or easy as R hoped. When we left R, the recovering zombie, and his human love Julie at the end of Warm Bodies, things were looking hopeful. Some spoilers for the first book in this series, Warm Bodies: Final review, first posted on Fantasy Literature.

The burning world isaac marion