As I’ve noted elsewhere in this blog, I enjoy the books of Preston and Child, both together and individually. I (usually) particularly like the Agent Pendergast books because the character of Pendergast has been so well developed and is just fun to read about. His unwavering calm and high-society manners in any situation are always entertaining.

That being said…this has been my least favorite Pendergast novel to date. I think this is for a number of reasons…but it’s hard to pin down. First, and foremost, it’s about zombies. Yes, zombies. Here’s the weird thing…I haven’t had any problem in the past with mythical beasts terrorizing a New York museum or artificial intelligence machines falling in love with their creators. So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my suspension of disbelief. Nevertheless…I just couldn’t buy the zombies.

There is the whole Voodoo slant to the book that just didn’t jibe with me. While it was interesting to watch Pendergast reveal specific knowledge about Voodoo spells and charms, that could not even come close to eradicating the pain experienced on every page that contained the annoying little Voodoo expert.

There is the whole “D’Agosta is angry” and “Laura doesn’t like/trust Pendergast” lines that get somewhat tiresome since they are carry-overs from the last book.

With all that being said, I was actually quite pleased at the ending. As usual, the ending was well setup by the main content. Preston and Child have the entire story conceived beforehand and everything weaves together into a neat little package. The “bad guy” (or at least the main one) wasn’t a surprise to me; I thought that they telegraphed that one a bit too much, but the intricacies of the plot were nice. The zombie-ness of the book is overturned by a solid ending.

All in all, not my favorite Preston/Child book, but still a good read. It certainly hasn’t deterred me from their work; I look forward to the next release by either author.

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

Another thing that really bothered me was losing Bill Smithback in the first five minutes. Because in those five minutes (and throughout the rest of the book), you find out that he was actually a pretty good guy and the cynical reporter asshole that he normally played wasn’t his true self. He finally shared his true goodness with someone and then he dies. I think what made me most mad about this was that when the book opens with him talking about how in love he is and how perfect his life is, I immediately said (out loud), “Well, he’s going to die.” And so he did. About two minutes later.  It’s not necessarily a bad thing for an author to kill off a character, in fact, I think you have to from time to time to keep it interesting. It just sucked the way that it happened. (This is actually all a nice compliment for the story because I cared enough to be annoyed.)