"Dead Reckoning" Review and Guest Post by Rosemary Edghill

As part of the blog tour for "Dead Reckoning" by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill, I have my review of the book and a guest post from one of the authors herself!

 I'd like to welcome Rosemary Edghill to In the Hammock for a guest post! 

 Thank you, Rosemary, for taking the time out today to visit as part of the blog tour!

Guest Post

Rosemary Edghill here!  I was thrilled to be invited to make a guest post about my new book.  Dead Reckoning is another collaboration with my long-time co-author, Mercedes Lackey, and we had a huge amount of fun writing about Jett and Gibbons in the still-wild 19th century West.  I really hope it's as much fun for everybody to read as it was to write.

I've been a writer for most of my adult life, and there are always new stories to tell.  But sometimes there are characters wandering around in search of a story, and that was the case with Jett Galatin.  I've known her for years, but somehow I never found the right story for her.  She was a drifter and a gunslinger, and I'd written more than three dozen books, but none of them had been a Western.  Then Misty said to me: "Hey!  Let's do a historical as our next YA!" and Jett poked me and said: "It's my turn now."

As soon as I told Misty about Jett, we were off and running, and I made the acquaintance of Honoria Verity Providentia Gibbons (known to one and all as "Gibbons"), an inventor, scientist, and explorer, and Jett's opposite in nearly every way.  Jett is a Southern Belle in her heart of hearts, but she dresses and lives as a man.  Gibbons is an emancipated woman who feels that traditional gender roles are archaic nonsense that have no place in a rational scientific world.

Of course, adventurers need an adventure, and what adventure could be better than … zombies?

When zombies invade a West Texas cattle town, Jett barely escapes with her.  Fleeing for her life, she meets Gibbons, who is testing her newest invention, a steam-powered horseless wagon.  When Jett tries to warn her about the walking dead, Gibbons says there must be another explanation for what Jett saw.  Gibbons doesn't believe in anything that can't be explained by science, and says zombies are scientifically impossible.  Jett says seeing is believing, and she knows what she saw: zombies.

So who's right?  And can Jett and Gibbons stop arguing long enough to avert the zombie apocalypse?  Come to Alsop Texas in April of 1857 and find out.

I love to hear from … oh, practically anyone (honest!).  Find me at: http://rosemary-edghill.dreamwidth.org/ or http://www.facebook.com/rosemary.edghill



Thank you, Rosemary!!

My Review

"Dead Reckoning"
by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill

Publisher: Bloomsbury
Release Date: June 5, 2012

Source: ARC sent by publisher

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Summary from goodreads.com:  

Jett is a girl disguised as a boy, living as a gambler in the old West as she searches for her long-lost brother. Honoria Gibbons is a smart, self-sufficient young woman who also happens to be a fabulous inventor. Both young women travel the prairie alone – until they are brought together by a zombie invasion! As Jett and Honoria investigate, they soon learn that these zombies aren’t rising from the dead of their own accord … but who would want an undead army? And why? This gunslinging, hair-raising, zombie western mashup is perfect for fans of Cowboys vs. Aliens and Pride & Prejudice & Zombies.

My Review:

I really loved this book! There were so many aspects that I loved, it's hard to mention them all. I knew the book was about zombies, but really the zombies weren't totally the focus of the book. Instead of focusing on the typical, gory zombie attacks, the authors really hone in on how the characters solve the mystery and use their brains to outsmart the zombies.

The story has a steampunk feel, especially with Gibbons' steam-powered travelling contraption. But again, the steampunk aspect didn't take over the whole story. It was almost trying to hide within the rest of the story. I loved that it was a historical setting as well, it's just so much more of an escape, especially in this type of fantasy story.

The three mismatched main characters were fantastic. I loved Gibbons the most because she was so unexpected. She was very wealthy, and also her father made sure she was heavily educated in science. The steam powered vehicle she drives, yeah, she invented it. She's extremely book smart, but also, so practical and smart in common sense ways too. She has preparedness down to a science. Jett was a lot of fun to read about, her accent was very charming, as was her style of disguising herself as a boy instead of a girl. White Fox was a bit of an enigma, a bit of the strong silent type. Overall, the three of them made a great team. I'd love to see more from these characters and this setting in the future.


Main Characters: 5/5
Supporting Characters: 4/5
Setting: 5/5
Romance: n/a
Uniqueness: 5/5
Cover: 5/5
Writing: 5/5


Bottom Line: Great mix of historical, zombies, steampunk, and mystery! The leading characters really made this book a keeper.