Monday, February 14, 2011

Review: Temperature: Dead + Rising by Adam Santo

Publisher: CreateSpace
Publishing Date: September 25th, 2010
ISBN: 9781453658536
Pages: 192 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Summary from GoodReads:
Wickedly sardonic, this black fantasy for mature teen readers is first in a series of novels that features likeable members of the undead in a race to escape death. Dark, funny, and filled with suspense, Temperature: Dead and Rising by new author Adam Santo is a wildly creepy fantasy;and a corpse of a good time. When Sally Mertill is driving a carload of her friends back to Green Mountain Falls after visiting Pike's Peak they'll careen off the side of the mountain. With no guardrails it's not surprising there are no survivors. And yet within two days a not altogether bad fellow named Bocnic Drewings will call upon the metal drawer where her body awaits autopsy, open it, and lead her on the adventure of a lifetime;well, that's if she'd have survived the accident. The powers that be have chosen Sally to become undead and she's the only other person time eternal who's been given the power to raise the dead;and control them. When leaders of rival undead clans find out, they either want to control or destroy her, which makes Sally staying undead a bit of a challenge.

My Review:
I received this book from the GoodReads First Reads program and I am glad I did. This book is about a girl who becomes undead. She is helped by another undead Bocnic and they are on the run from a group, known as the Church, that wants to eliminate the undead. Throughout the book Santo introduces many paranormal characters including vampires and a yeti. Santo has a great writing style and I have to admit I finished this book quite quickly. That could have something to do with the fact that the book is quite short though. I know that the book is left open for a sequel but I felt that the author could have made this novel a bit longer. It seemed that just as I was getting into the book and then it was over. Not only was it over but it was over with a cliffhanger. I liked the character of Sally (the undead); she was self assured and strong. There is a scene where she jumps out of a moving vehicle (just after she finds out how she originally died). In this scene Sally just seems kick ass. She thinks that Bocnic is trying to hurt her so she throws herself out of the car. She is anything but meek although this could have been to her detriment but I found it to be a positive attribute. It shows us that from the get-go she is willing to fight for what she believes in. While this novel is, I suppose, considered to have paranormal elements to it, I don't feel that it is forced or in your face. Some novels in this genre go a bit too far and end up losing their characters for the sake of fantasy worlds. This is not the case for this novel. There are paranormal elements but Santo is able to keep the authenticity of this characters in the midst of this. Overall, I quite enjoyed this novel but I wish it would have been longer. I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.

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