REVIEW: Working Stiff by Rachel Caine

Working Stiff by Rachel Caine

Genre: Adult Fiction, Horror, Urban Fantasy

Pages: 306 (paperback)

Publication: August 2011

Goodreads Summary: Bryn Davis knows working at Fairview Mortuary isn't the most glamorous career choice, but at least it offers stable employment--until she discovers her bosses using a drug that resurrects the clientele as part of an extortion racket. Now, Bryn faces being terminated--literally, and with extreme prejudice.

Wit the help of corporate double-agent Patrick McCallister, Bryn has a chance to take down the bigger problem--pharmaceutical company Pharmadene, which treats death as the ultimate corporate loyalty program. She'd better do it fast, before she becomes a zombie slave--a real working stiff. She'd be better off dead...

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Review: I love Rachel Caine, she is one of my favorite authors currently. Her Morganville Vampire books are a fresh young adult series, and her Weather Warden series gives new light to the gene / djin lore. When I saw that she had a new series coming out that was tackling and reinventing the zombie genre, I knew I had to read it.

Bryn is an ex-soldier who decides that handling the dead is a job that she could make a living from. Unfortunately, her first week doesn’t really go that well: she has a suicide on her watch; is harassed by Fast Eddy, the morgue’s undertaker; finds out that her boss is peddling drugs; and winds up dead. Luckily for Bryn, she doesn’t stay dead. Bryn doesn’t know why she has been brought back, or even exactly how. With the help of the undercover agent (and possible romantic interest) Patrick McCallister, she plans to find out exactly what’s going on and bring new definition to the term “Working Stiff”.

Ms. Caine has taken zombies and brought them to the modern age. Bryn doesn’t crave flesh and she isn’t a rotting corpse. She is a fully sustained person kept a live by the most ground breaking technology. Being the debut of a new series this book has a fair amount of world building and character development, but it is all done with a finesse that only a seasoned writer could possess. I love the idea behind a medical “corporate zombie,” and Ms.Caine has created a heroine that you can empathize with but who is a hardcore woman, all at the same time.

I am not sure how many books are planned in this new series, or even when the next one is planned to be released, but I am certainly watching and waiting for it. Ms.Caine has a knack for writing fantastic novels and this just adds another series of hers that I will be reading immediately upon there release.

Rating: 4 stars