TWO WEEKS' NOTICE by Rachel Caine is the second
installment in The Revivalist series and the author has
devised an inventive new way to rewrite a zombie tale with a
new spin. Many of the living dead stories I've read have
the zombies as the antagonists; the evil entities that the
hero or heroine have to kill in order to survive. They are
usually the classic slow-moving, flesh-eating meat puppets
and always the bad guys in every tale. Caine's new take on
the Undead has them as the heroine and the victim of a
corporate conspiracy by drug company Pharmadene. The
heroine of this urban fantasy thriller is Bryn Davis, a
gutsy ex-military woman who comes across as fairly complex
in her mission to uncover the corruption in Pharmadene, run
a company, juggle a slow-burning romance, comfort other
revived victims, and handle the issue that if not for a
vital injection she would be a rotting corpse.
At first glance, Bryn Davis appears to be your average
young, career-oriented woman but with one minor flaw -- she's
the undead now. In a classic case of being in the wrong
place at the wrong time, Bryn was killed at her funeral home
job for poking her nose where it didn't belong. Luckily, she
was revived using an experimental drug called Returne and
now she relies on getting these injections daily or she will
decompose and eventually die a slow and excruciating death.
At the opening of TWO WEEKS' NOTICE, we learn that Bryn is
now the new funeral director, given this position by the
FBI, who is investigating the Pharmadene Company that
created the Returne drug. Pharmadene experimented and
killed many of its employees in its research of the drug.
Essentially as compensation for being killed and revived,
and also with the agreement that Bryn will help them, the
FBI has allowed Bryn to take over the funeral home.
Bryn has an interesting cast of characters surrounding
and helping her. There is Patrick McAllister, her wealthy
boyfriend and former head of security for Pharmadene. He is
also the one to revive Bryn when she was murdered because of
his love for her. There is a slow progression in the romance
between Patrick and Bryn from the first book to this one,
but it is well worth the wait. Patrick appears to be a
multi-dimensional character with many handy skills -from
combat to weapons to those in the bedroom. From Joe the
mercenary-turned bodyguard to Riley Block, the ice-cold and
by-the-book FBI agent handling the Pharmadene investigation,
there doesn't seem to be any fluff or filler where the
characterizations are concerned. From the cast of funeral
home workers to the evil Jane, who I for one was looking
forward to getting her karma returned a hundredfold, you
will be transfixed from the first page to the last.
In New York Times bestselling author Rachel
Caine’s “thrilling”* Revivalist series, Bryn Davis finds out
that making a living can be rough if you’re already
dead...
After dying and being revived with
the experimental drug Returne, Bryn Davis is theoretically
free to live her unlife—with regular doses to keep her
going. But Bryn knows that the government has every
intention of keeping a tight lid on Pharmadene’s
life-altering discovery, no matter the
cost.
Thankfully, some things have changed for
the better; her job at the rechristened Davis Funeral Home
is keeping her busy and her fragile romance with Patrick
McCallister is blossoming—thanks in part to their combined
efforts in forming a support group for Returne addicts. But
when some of the group members suddenly disappear, Bryn
wonders if the government is methodically removing a threat
to their security, or if some unknown enemy has decided to
run the zombies into the ground…