UNDEAD AND UNSTABLE

A vampire queen misses her late friend…until he mysteriously returns.

Betsy “Don’t-Call-Me-Elizabeth” Taylor is having a hell of a week, which is quite a feat for the reigning vampire queen. She’s in the throes of mourning her dear friend Marc when she makes a unilateral decision to bring him back from the dead. The idea doesn’t go over so well with her housemates, but Betsy’s indifferent to everyone’s opinion but her own. Before she can spring into action doing—well, she’s not quite sure, but doing something—she and her husband, Sinclair, discover Marc dissecting Betsy’s dead cat. Even though they live in a world of the Antichrist, werewolves and other supernatural folk, zombie-Marc is unexpected and not universally welcomed. Concerns about the politically correct way to say zombie (“metaphysically-challenged”?) are preempted by a more pressing need to address and contain the unwanted visitor to the household. As with all women in charge, Betsy knows she’s got to clean up the mess, but it seems possible she’s going to make things worse and not better.

Davidson’s latest seems to be less interested in presenting new action than in laying groundwork for further volumes in her series (Undead and Undermined, 2011, etc.). The same mixture as before, but with more Game of Thrones references.