Moving to the city with her Mom wasn't Zoe's idea. After her father died, Zoe and her mom needed a fresh start, not to mention a cheaper place to live because the insurance company has lost all her dad's paperwork and are claiming he never existed. Sick of this new life and fresh start, Zoe is looking for an escape. She finds it in a used record store. This record store doesn't simply offer music. In a tiny back room most people pass without noticing, there are thousands of records that hold lost souls, and Zoe's dad is on one of them. The proprietor of this strange shop is willing to let Zoe listen, but there is a price. There's always a price and it may be more than Zoe can pay.

In DEAD SET, Richard Kadrey delivers a richly imagined story that begs us to ask ourselves, what would we be willing to give for one more day? I'm a fan of Kadrey's writing and love the darkly comic, irreverent tone he uses to tell his stories that revolve around death and the afterlife. Zoe embodies the best of that tone. She's all sharp-edged and punk to her core. She's snarky, funny, and intelligent. She's sentimental and compassionate and feels the loss of her father deeply. It's that combination of punk attitude and empathy that allows her to see beyond the boundaries into the realms of the dead. She refuses to listen when people tell there's nothing she can do to save her dad. She refuses to follow the company line because that's the only way. That refusal gets her into a lot of trouble but it's what makes her the perfect character to root for.

DEAD SET flirts with mythology, and it's fun to find those links because they add another layer to the impressive scope of Kadrey's world. The city where the dead linger is named Iphigene. In Greek mythology Iphigenia is the daughter Agamemnon sacrificed in order to sail to Troy. I'll let you read DEAD SET to fill in the connection, but those details give this novel a depth that will make you want to re-read because every journey back into this amazing story world will reveal another layer and another connection between the living and the dead.

DEAD SET by Richard Kadrey is quite simply fantastic. The world is rich in myth and symbolism, but it is Zoe who makes this story a modern hero's quest into the land of the dead. Zoe has the attitude and heart that could change the world, but she'll have to make it out of the land of the dead first! DEAD SET is definitely a novel worth buying, and I can't wait for more titles by Richard Kadrey.

Book Summary

Acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Richard Kadrey creates a wonderful, stand-alone dark fantasy

After her father's funeral, Zoe moved to the big city with her mother to start over. But change always brings trials, and life in the city is not so easy. Money is tight, and Zoe's only escape, as has always been the case, is in her dreams—a world apart from her troubled real life where she can spend time with her closest companion: her lost brother, Valentine.

But something or someone has entered their dreamworld uninvited. And a chance encounter at a used record store, where the vinyl holds not music but lost souls, has opened up a portal to the world of the restless dead. It's here that the shop's strange proprietor offers Zoe the chance to commune with her dead father. The price? A lock of hair. Then a tooth. Then . . .