Review: Deathless Divide

Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been nearly two years since Justina Ireland came out with her highly successful alternate history horror story, Dread Nation. Now, at long last, here's the sequel, delivering on the promise of that ending with a letter about a rumored safe haven - appropriately called Haven - in California. But for 500 pages, Ireland takes a long damn journey to get there, dialing up the criticism of America's racist past - and present, especially given how appropriate this book's themes of spreading contagion and rampant inequality are in the time of the coronavirus.


Remembering Debbie Reese's critique of Dread Nation, I kept an eye out to see if Ireland had tried to take some of Reese's points to heart, and there's at least one she did. Namely, the question of whether or not Daniel Redfern's name is meant to be a translation from Lenape, or straight up a white name forced onto him. This book confirms that it's the latter, at least clarifying that particular question. Generally, Ireland does seem to do better with Native rep, as well as Latino rep - a significant chunk of the book takes place in California, with lots of Californio people in the supporting cast, and Jane noting how they keep their traditions as much alive as they can - and how, largely due to America pretty much falling apart in the East at this point, California is a far more Spanish-influenced land. (Naturally, of course, Spanish colonists get put on blast too.) Somewhere I saw an early review that critiqued the book for ignoring anti-Asian racism and making the Chinese look like powerful oppressors, but for what it's worth, it's indicated that in this alternate timeline, Asia fell to zombies as well, and the Chinese immigrated to California in such great numbers as to overwhelm any attempts by white settlers to block them.

Though of course, Jane and Katherine, our two POV characters in this narrative, need to keep on walking all the time in search of a place for themselves - feeling rather like Parable of the Sower at times, no less, especially in the second half when they're both in California, searching for Haven after first arriving in San Francisco.

After 500 pages, I feel like this book's ending could be a pretty good one for the whole series - though it's also open-ended enough to allow for a third book somewhere down the line. Let's just wait and see what Ireland does next. Though there's also her Never and the Now series in the pipeline as well.

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