Two Weeks' Notice by Rachel Caine

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Terrance McArthur

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Check out details on how to win a copy of this book at the end of this review & interview.

It’s strange for Bryn Davis to be running the Davis Funeral Home…because she died there. Revived with the drug Returné, injected with nanites, microbots that repair injuries and hold off the rot and decay of death (and make her close to unkillable), Bryn has to take daily booster shots to keep her alive.

Welcome to Two Weeks’ Notice, the second Revivalist novel by Rachel Caine (Weather Warden, Morganville Vampires, and Outcast Season series).

These re-living bodies are not your shuffling, mumbling, cemetery-variety zombies. They are stronger, often smarter, and determined to continue living, even if it is with bio-mechanical help. They have their doubts and frustrations, but Bryn runs a support group for other Returné addicts.

The drug’s inventor kidnapped her sister and killed—and revived—her, and twisted the military uses of the injections to turn the girl into a time-release assassin. The FBI has taken control of the nanite manufacturer Pharmadene, but some of the agents can’t be trusted. Some of the Returné-revived-and-addicted victims have disappeared, and it may be permanently. Bryn is attacked repeatedly and put in danger, brought in and out of death until her little nanites are ready to give up on the reanimating business. Her bodyguard and her mansion-dwelling boyfriend are merely human; they can only do so much, especially with a sadistic torturer who knows how to bring joy into her work and is eager to reduce Bryn to compost.

Image source: Penguin

In lightning-fast succession, as the remaining words of Two Weeks’ Notice dwindle to a small number, twists are piled upon twists in the flip of a page, and the effect is startling. Not only does the playing field change, but it stops being a game; it is a war for survival, for the living and the formerly-dead, and former enemies become allies, while the good guys may be more dangerous to the health of the robot-carrying.

Caine enjoys putting her heroine into lose-lose situations that she knows will kill Bryn. Moments later, she is screaming back to life…until her author decides to off her again. So often, readers will say "I don’t know how she’ll get out of this one." In this series, don’t worry…she won’t.

This is an amazing chunk of red-hot dead lit. Grab hold of it before it melts away.

To enter to win a copy of Two Weeks' Notice, simply email KRL at life@kingsriverlife[dot]com by replacing the [dot] with a period, and with the subject line “Notice”, or comment on this article. A winner will be chosen September 29, 2012. U.S. residents only.

Click here to purchase Two Weeks Notice from Mysterious Galaxy & you will be helping support an indie bookstore & Kings River Life:

Two Weeks' Notice: A Revivalist Novel

Terrance V. Mc Arthur is a California-born, Valley-raised librarian/entertainer/writer. He is currently writing a stage adaptation of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild for the Fresno County Public Library’s next The Big Read. He lives in Sanger, four blocks from the library, with his wife, his daughter, and a spinster cat.