Isaac Marion’s 2010 novel Warm Bodies (and 2013 movie) was Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with an undead twist: A zombie named R, who still clings to shreds of human memories, falls in love with human Julie. And while their romance bucked the Bard’s formula by ending with life rather than death, their star-crossed love isn’t the only story in that postapocalyptic future. Marion revealed on his website that he’s working on a sequel, The Burning World, picking up right where Warm Bodies left off, which will be published February 7, 2017.
Here’s the synopsis from Marion’s website:
R is recovering from death.
He’s learning how to breathe, how to speak, how to be human, one clumsy step at a time. He doesn’t remember his old life and he doesn’t want to. He’s building a new one with Julie.
But his old life remembers him. The plague has another host far more dangerous than the Dead. It’s coming to return the world to the good old days of stability and control and the strong eating the weak, and stopping it will require a frightening journey into the surreal wastelands of America—and the shadowy basement of R’s mind.
Barnes & Noble has more:
Being alive is hard. Being human is harder. But since his recent recovery from death, R is making progress. He’s learning how to read, how to speak, maybe even how to love, and the city’s undead population is showing signs of life. R can almost imagine a future with Julie, this girl who restarted his heart—building a new world from the ashes of the old one.
And then helicopters appear on the horizon. Someone is coming to restore order. To silence all this noise. To return things to the way they were, the good old days of stability and control and the strong eating the weak. The plague is ancient and ambitious, and the Dead were never its only weapon.
How do you fight an enemy that’s in everyone? Can the world ever really change? With their home overrun by madmen, R, Julie, and their ragged group of refugees plunge into the otherworldly wastelands of America in search of answers. But there are some answers R doesn’t want to find. A past life, an old shadow, crawling up from the basement.
Check out the cover for The Burning World:
Finally, you can read an excerpt on Marion’s website.
via io9
