Generally, a zombie story involves rough-and-tumble survivalists eking out a meager existence while constantly on the lookout for zombies, which have essentially inherited the Earth. Following a brief detailing of the appearance of the dead in the prologue, the narrative blasts ahead nearly two decades. The cleverness of Ireland’s novel comes in how it not only reimagines history but also how it twists the well-worn tropes of the zombie apocalypse story. In the case of that graphic novel, America wins the war in Vietnam, Richard Nixon enjoys several terms as, basically, a US dictator, and the march toward global mutually assured destruction becomes all but unavoidable. This has invited comparisons to obvious titles like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which is fair enough, but while I throw no shade to any of those fun and quirky books, Dread Nation is far richer, more clever, and, dare I say–meatier–than any of the other novels I have read in this trend. Alan Moore’s Watchmen, which reimagines historical events as if superheroes had actually existed, has a stronger thematic connection to it.
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