David Towsey

Thomas only wants to go home to his wife and child. He hasn't seen them for some time since he's been fighting a civil war to keep his rural town Barkley safe. Unfortunately, he was killed in that war. Now, he's a Walkin', devoid of pain or any physical sensation. His town regards his kind as evil and destroys them on sight. Will Thomas every be reunited with his family?

The world in the novel is reminiscent of American 19th century frontier days even though it's set hundreds of years in the future. Civilization has collapsed and no one really knows what happened. It was the Automated Age, presumably around the present day, and then humanity fell. The walking dead are becoming more and more numerous over time. The city of Barkley is deeply religious and cites science and education as the reasons for man's downfall. Writing or drawing anything anywhere is forbidden. The only book to be read is the Good Book and that's it. The Walkin' are evil incarnate. Not only are the Walkin' killed, but any of their children as well because they are corrupt and will eventually rise as well.

These rules are strictly enforced and the religious fanaticism deepens and grows. The pinnacle of fanaticism is acolyte Luke. He starves himself, hurts himself, and sees everything in shades of black and white. No matter how sinful he is inside, he considers himself the pinnacle of morality. He is willing to kill for his faith and helps keep the town under the thrall of this religion of fear and hate. Parts of the book are from his point of view. It's terrifying to see his thought processes and justifications for his monstrous behavior. Man is the monster here, not the zombies.

The zombies here are just like humans beings except that they don't eat, drink, sleep, heal, or feel pain. They have all the injuries they had at death but don't bleed anymore. Thomas is the main Walkin' character and he only wants to see his family again. He doesn't want to hurt anyone, but will defend his daughter to his permanent death. He had no idea he condemned her death when he came to see her and was forced to take her with him despite not having any place to stay or food or water for her. Other less religious cities employ zombies to do menial tasks, but still don't treat them fully as people. Zombies could be seen as pretty much any group treated as less than human by society.

Your Brother's Blood is an amazing book. The world is different than I've seen. The author captures so many differing points of view, even of characters I find odious. I would love to see more from this world. I hope this book gets more attention because I just picked it up at indie bookstore Mysterious Galaxy without hearing anything about it. I'll eagerly await David Towsey's next book.… (altro)

In 2013, Jo Fletcher Books sent me a copy of David Towsey’s Your Brother’s Blood and introduced me to a whole new perspective on the walking dead, and I realized I was looking at something very special. A “zombie-western series with the feels” is how I would describe The Walkin’ books, except I wouldn’t want to lead readers into a false sense of security either! Yes, while Towsey does show a more “human” side to zombies by letting them retain their emotions, intelligence and awareness of everything around them, like most tales that take place in the wild and lawless frontier, these novels possess an air of that steely grimness.

Your Servants and Your People is the sequel to Your Brother’s Blood that takes place seven years later. In that time, many things have changed. The Walkin’, or those who have died and come back, are tolerated in society, if not wholly embraced. In many towns they are still discriminated against and treated as an inferior class, though without the need to eat or sleep, most find work as laborers for the living.

Our protagonist Thomas McDermott on the other hand just wants to be left alone. Since the end of the first book, he has reunited with his wife Sarah and daughter Mary, but there has yet been a happy ending for the three of them. In fact, the McDermotts are on the move again, looking for a place to settle after having to leave home after home. Seems folks aren’t too accepting of a Walkin’ cohabiting with the living. Now Thomas is leading his family to a more remote part of the country, far away from the judging eyes of society, and escorting the McDermotts are a group of soldiers who are also on their way to the frontier garrison of Fort Wilson.

The series is clearly maturing, with book two differing from its predecessor in several major ways. Firstly, the years have changed the characters, none more than Mary, who was just a child in Your Brother’s Blood. That little girl has grown into a young woman, and gone is her sweet innocence, which has been replaced by a bitter aloofness. Mary sure doesn’t say much, but she doesn’t need to for readers to grasp that this is one angry and rebellious teenager. Towsey portrays her character with a quiet intensity; he’s really good when it comes to “showing, not telling” and I love his subtle touch with all his characters.

The scope of the story has also expanded beyond the McDermott family. We branch into two significant threads here, the first one following Thomas, Sarah and Mary’s progress in establishing their homestead, and the second following the group of soldiers who were sent to Fort Wilson. A young man named Bryn is focus of this second group, and he and comrades go through some awful, unspeakable things while holed up in that lonely outpost, things that I won’t go into detail here but that I will say are worthy of the most chilling of horror stories.

In spite of that, there is a lesser sense of urgency here in Your Servants and Your People as compared to Your Brother’s Blood. The first book’s premise was a lot more intense, following Thomas and Mary as they flee desperately across a forbidding wasteland keeping ahead of a gang of zealots bent on killing them both. For most of this book, the plot moves at a gentler and steadier pace. Thomas and his family make their way to a new part of the country, stake their claim on a piece of land and begin the slow task of building a house. It’s the classic pioneer life story…well, except for the fact that the head of your party is a zombie.

These books have feeling because at their heart they are about love and devotion to family – not even dying could stop Thomas from coming home to Mary, or from providing her and Sarah a safe place to live. But there are still those who see him as an abomination and will stop at nothing to see him destroyed. I was hoping to finally see the McDermotts settle into their new life, because if anyone deserves a happy ending, it’s them. As it turned out, the gradual pacing of this book fooled me into thinking that the threat was over, so that the bombshell at the end crept up on me as I was least expecting it. Well played, Mr. Towsey.

The Walkin’ series is fresh, richly imagined, and sure to stand out for readers looking for a new twist on a classic genre. Beautiful and haunting, Your Servants and Your People is a sequel that brings back everything that was great about Your Brother’s Blood but at the same time feels different enough for me to see that the series is evolving. David Towsey has a knack for writing very gritty, very real protagonists with depth, and my heart is aching and anxious for the McDermotts now, wondering what will happen to them in the next book. I’m definitely not missing out on the final installment of this trilogy.… (altro)

I usually start off my reviews with an explanation of what initially drew me to the book, and in this case, it was the words "Zombies" and "Western" used to describe it that had me tripping over my feet for the opportunity to check it out. To date, I've only read a few titles from relatively new speculative fiction imprint Jo Fletcher, but they've already set themselves apart in my mind as a very special publisher, thanks to books like Your Brother's Blood which mix elements of sci-fi and fantasy with many other genres. Here, the result is something completely new and different, but I was also surprised to find this "Zombie-Western" to be quite literary and elegant at the same time.

The book is actually set hundreds of years into the future after an oft referred to but unknown apocalyptic event, and pockets of humanity now live ruggedly in small communities spread out across a vast arid land in a style reminiscent of the Old West. A war is currently being waged between two armies, and caught in between them is the complicated matter of the dead who come back to life, those referred to as "the Walkin'".

Thomas grew up in Barkley, and at thirty-two years old he'd left to fight a war only to die and wake up again. He knows going home will put his wife and child in danger, but the pull towards love and family is too great; in the end his arrival in town sends him on the run again, with his daughter Mary in tow. It becomes a race against time as they try to evade their pursuers, because Barkley's zealots do not suffer the wicked or their spawn to live.

Other than a very few exceptions, I don't think I've come across many zombie stories that are told from the perspective of the undead, so this immediately makes Your Brother's Blood stand out for me. As a Walkin', Thomas' heart does not beat, nor does he bleed or feel a thing, but he does possess emotions, intelligence, and awareness of everything around him. He remembers Mary even though he hasn't seen her in a long time, and his love and devotion to her leads to many sad and touching scenes between father and daughter.

In this and many other ways, Your Brother's Blood is not a typical zombie novel; in fact, it shares very few similarities with other books in this horror sub-genre. Towsey's zombies aren't the mindless, shambling and brains-craving kind to be feared, and much of my enjoyment was actually the result of how much I sympathized with Thomas and related to his concerns for Mary. It's definitely a story that tugs at your heartstrings, but on the flip side there's also a sense of danger and urgency, for at the heart of this plot is the desperate-chase-across-the-wasteland factor that's so characteristic of classic Westerns.

There's just such a strange but unique mix of elements here, making this a special book unlike anything I've read before. There's just enough detail in this book to make you wonder things like, what happened to result in this post-apocalyptic world, and what's "in the blood" that makes a person more liable to rise as a Walkin' when they die? I'm hoping future installments will explore these questions, but I'd be okay too if some things are left as mysteries.

It's always interesting to me when I see authors take what's familiar and shakes things up, creating imaginative characters and new worlds that lead to speculation. This was an enjoyable debut from David Towsey that not only surprised me with its originality, but also had a lot more feeling than I expected. I recommend it anyone looking for something that's different, resonant and not "just another zombie book".… (altro)