The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones

 I may have found a new favorite YA author. (Need to try a couple of her books before I'm sure, but it's looking likely) I really have no idea where or when I got this book. Usually I remember picking things up, but this one just appeared in a stack. Maybe we have book gnomes.

I'm not usually much of a fan of zombie stories. They can be fun, diverting anyway, but there's not usually much to them plot-wise. Zombies just aren't that interesting. Ultimately, they are a kind of metaphor for an implacable natural force like disease. The rotting human corpse angle just makes it more horrifying. However, there's something tedious about a mindless hoard of rotting corpses. In less time than one would expect, the zombies just becomes part of the scenery and it's just a survival story. 

However, a zombie story where there's something else going on can be fun. The Bone Houses is one of those. The actual bone houses are really just zombies animated by a curse, but they aren't mindless. Inscrutable, maybe. They can't talk and they sometimes attack, but that isn't quite the same thing as being mindless. From the beginning, it's clear that there's more to them than just mindless attacking corpses. The main character, Ryn, treats them with compassion even as she dismembers them with her ax which makes for a different kind of zombie story. 

The whole world of the novel is deeply reminiscent of Welsh and Celtic story traditions complete with an immortal race that packed up their castles and left the world taking their magic with them. Just like so many of the traditional stories, some things got left behind and they cause problems which is how Ryn, who makes her living as a gravedigger, gets pulled into an adventure which a somewhat mysterious mapmaker named Ellis.  They are also accompanied by an undead zombie goat. Their goal is to find the broken cauldron of rebirth and end the curse. 

I think what makes this so much better than the typical zombie story is the layered stories. There's the mythological level of the other king and his people. Followed by the story of the breaking of the cauldron. Mixed in with that level is the story of Ellis being found as a child and the story of the disappearance of Ryn's father. The final layer is the story of Ryn and Ellis meeting. Each layer is woven together in the narrative which makes for some interesting reading. 

Generally, a good read. Not too scary, and the love story bits are all solidly PG.