I'm not really big into zombies, so my rating should be taken as even more of a compliment. These aren't your run-of-the-mill zombies, though, and Priest tends more towards the suspense than the ew side of the horror spectrum. I'm not 100% sure how I feel about the end, but I suspect that's personal bias rather than a failing of the book. (That's all I'm going to say even though I warned for spoilers.) ( )

local, makes it fun.... I didn't realize it had titles ahead of it, stood alone well. ( )

This is the third, and as-of-this-writing, last book in Cherie Priest's Eden Moore series. I really like these, and hope that Priest comes back to revisit Eden one of these days!

Eden's a regular young Southern woman who just happens to be able to see ghosts - and has a bit of a voodoo legacy from her evil great-grandfather. As this story opens, Eden's trying to get her life together a bit and act like an adult - she's just agreed to buy a condo at the new development they're building down by the river.

But then people start warning her: strange thing are going on down by the water's edge. Homeless people and punk kids have been disappearing. The cops don't care about a bunch of transients who probably just picked up and left town... but something sinister seems to be going on.

And gradually, absolutely no one can ignore what's going on, as things escalate into a FEMA-level disaster, with insane flooding, evacuations, and ZOMBIES!

Eden has to figure out what historical event caused this plague of the undead, and to try to lay their souls (and paranormally animated bodies) to rest.
( )

In this book, people are starting to disappear if they get too close to the Tennessee River, and the river is starting to flood so it’s reaching closer and closer to where all the people are. Unlike the first two books in the trilogy, which were primarily ghost stories, this book turns into a full-fledged zombie story with zombies sloshing through flooded downtown Chattanooga. I think this is the first zombie book I’ve ever read, so I couldn’t begin to say whether it’s derivative or original, but I enjoyed it.

Actually, as far as the meat of this story went, I thought it was the best of the three stories in the series. It kept me guessing and anxious to keep reading and see what would happen next. It had some very mild creepiness at about the same level as the first book, but nothing major. Eden’s life is about as unstructured and aimless as ever, especially considering she seems to be at least 25, has no job, and is still living with her adoptive parents, but she does seem to have a few nebulous plans for the future this time around and even has plans to move out on her own.

My main complaint about this book was the ending. The main story was wrapped up and explained reasonably well, but the ending seemed abrupt. There’s no discussion of how the general population is handling recent events, no follow up with the other supporting characters in the story to see how they’re doing, and no real sense of closure for Eden. There’s a plot thread regarding Eden that has run through all three of the books, and is brought up many times and seems to be a major source of consternation for Eden, but it too is left without any closure at the end. Since I felt like the previous two books were wrapped up pretty well and with more detail, I had higher hopes that the final book in the series would be wrapped up more nicely. There’s a Q&A on the author’s Goodreads page indicating that she “didn’t have any more adventures planned – and the last two books sold very poorly”, so there probably won’t be any more books in this series.

But, as with the other two books, I enjoyed reading this and I had trouble putting it down. I don’t have any more books by Cherie Priest on my To-Be-Read list, but I would definitely be willing to give some of her other stuff a try sometime in the distant future. ( )

(Bk 3/Eden Moore series) Modern southern gothic. Set in Chattanooga, we meet up with Eden Moore again. She still sees & hears ghosts, which is a good thing because there are things in the river, things that are killing people and as it rains endlessly, the river starts to flood and Eden finds out the zombies in the water are empty - except for the angriest little gril (cue creepy music). So Eden has to turn to a ghost to find out why the things are coming and what they want...Or try to. Interesting B characters or sub-A, if you will, help lend the story depth and once again, Priest's atmopshere building talents are great.

Anyway, I find it hard to think this will be the last Eden Moore, as there are new story possibilites and open ties everywhere - which I don't want to list as it will be a spoiler for this story but I really hope there are more to come someday. ( )