65. Your Resting Place

We arrive at the end at last. In case you haven’t been following, Your Resting Place is the third and final instalment of the Walkin’ Trilogy by David Towsey. Your Brother’s Blood and Your Servants and Your People have been solid novels full of stoic characters, easy to read and enigmatically interesting. I was honestly a little sad to jump back into the plights of my favourite family struggling around this zombie-western, but only because that would mean that soon it would end. But my curiosity has been eating at me, so I devoured this novel in a day while listening to my Led Zeppelin records.

Your Resting Place – David Towsey

This novel has a very different feel to the previous two. Your Resting Place seems to grab you by the throat from the onset, the world seems harsher but with a faster pace. We do not spend a long time running away or dreading the horrible things in this novel, they happen abruptly, they find us because we are helpless to stop them finding us. After the ending of Your Servants and Your People this is not surprising. Towsey seems to have taken away the airbags and is ready to throw you into head on collisions and show you what his characters are made of and he does it so well.

Again some time has passed since the previous novel and we follow a new generation in the McDermott family. Ryan is a young adolescent who is trying very hard to survive on the farm with his alcoholic mother. Ryan is a little naive and innocent because of his relative isolation, but his home is far from a safe and cosy beginning and because of that he is a little bit of an old soul – I really liked him from the onset.

We come into his life at a point where things are as they are and have been that way for a very long time. He knows when to duck, he knows the sound of a bad mood through the walls of the house, he knows when to make himself scarce and how long to wait before waking his mother for breakfast. Ryan begins the novel already in the fire and Towsey simply offers the frying pan for him to jump into.

After his mother has a run in with a man and sinks into the very bottom of her despair Ryan finds himself with one difficult choice after another and ends up on the road heading who knows where.

Out of the three I think this novel really highlights the violence and brutality of life on the frontier. A difficult life was to be expected and many – if not all – of the characters have a cloud of sadness over them. However very few of Towsey’s characters ever give up, the courage they have to persevere and survive is almost tattooed onto their bones. Ceaselessly, they go on until they meet an unstoppable force and they must move.

Speaking of unstoppable forces, the Drowned Woman is hunting Ryan’s father. She is sort of absent from most of the novel bar the prologue and the end and is one of the novels most mysterious points. However she does introduce herself to Ryan in a very gentle way which conflicts with the talked about in hushed voices mythology she has with the other characters who know of her. If you’ve read the other books your little heart is fluttering away going and you’re experiencing the ‘AWWWWWWWWW! LOOK! Happiness might happen here… please let it happen here…’

Something that I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned about this series is that throughout there are strong and relatable female characters. The Drowned Woman isn’t the only badass woman in this series, but just like the men of these books not every one of them is a perfect shot and not every one of them has been entirely good their entire lives. People are stupid, but some of them make better choices as they get older and wiser.

When Ryan finally meets his Pa, the guy is this enigmatically stoic cube of a man practically carved out of the landscape itself. There is a sense that Pa has emotions that he wants to share and incorporate Ryan into, but also a detachment and distance. Having a relationship with the other books at this point also gives a you a little more to run with. There are reasons this man that makes me squeamish and want to yell ‘RUN HE IS A BAD MAN!’ but to avoid any spoilers I’m not going to go into why.

This is  the only novel out of the trilogy that I felt could stand up alone without the support of the others – which I feel is a remarkable strength. Sure you will miss the great history of the McDermott family, you will miss some hint of what has come before and where this world is but narratively Your Resting Place is quite self contained. Towsey assumes you have read these novels, but he does not spoon feed you and back peddle through tens of pages to ‘recap’ what has happened before.

The richness of Your Resting Place comes a little from knowing a little more about Ryan’s history than perhaps Ryan does. It leads to conflicted feelings as a reader and something that all brilliant novels should reflect on and that is: life is messy and certainly not straightforward.

I am very sad to be finally round this trilogy up, this has been a wonderful ride! These are wonderfully enigmatic books, they are well written, intelligent, they reinvigorate a genre with empathy, and I cannot praise them enough. I am very much looking forward to rereading them.

Thank you for writing them Dave and also for working so hard to make them happen.

50. Your Servants and Your People

You may remember that I started this trilogy last year. Your Brother’s Blood is an enigmatic read, economic, beautifully written, and highly engaging. Not to mention that it is unusual. As a zombie-western, it began this trilogy with such a jolt to the senses it was the perfect novel to read during finishing off my Master’s Dissertation. I have secretly been keeping this one for the right day and now almost six months after handing my Dissertation in I was finally ready to return to that world that I now associate with that point in my life.

Your Servants and Your People – David Towsey

Your Servants and your People, is quite an enigmatic read and for a long time I was very curious about the prologue. It is that little itch a novel can give you, “but please… you haven’t explained this yet… give me the big reveal…” Since starting Jordan’s Wheel of Time series I have become a big fan of the prologue that reveals some enigmatic element of the story that is only understood later on. This prologue reveal, strikes you off balance with wonderful tenacity.

Anyway. You may remember from Your Brother’s Blood that the narrative was saturated with religious doctrine and murderous acolytes, conflicting choices, families, and a lot of feelings. As all good sequels should have, there are echoes of Your Brother’s Blood, but this novel moves away from it enough any further beyond I do not think it would be as successful and too close and it would’ve been a very different novel.

In this instalment, our Walkin’ hero Thomas McDermott has a few different choices to make and all of them concern his family.

Seven years on, many things have changed. The Walkin’ are shown to be tolerated a little better but still discriminated against. They find work as labourers which is work that they excel at as they never tire, never need to eat, and never complain when the work would be hard for a living person. But Thomas McDermott is a Walkin’ who still has his very much alive family and wants to be left alone and to be able to ensure their survival and peace. They have been forced to move from place to place by fires and intolerances that seemed to have changed Sarah and their daughter Mary. Sarah is somehow harder, perhaps colder and Mary has grown up into a bitter teenager who dreams of fires, and doesn’t flinch when she is physically assaulted by strange men.

The novel opens with the family traveling with an escort, a group of soldiers heading to the remote outpost Fort Wilson. The unpopulated, harsh country is where the McDermott’s intend to survive far away from the prying eyes of society, hoping to finally be safe. Luckily for the McDermott’s they do not experience the horrors of the Bryn and the other soldiers at Fort Wilson. Bryn takes up the other half of the novel, finding himself avoiding death by chance and then witnessing his confused comrades waking from it. Bryn is a sweet character, though throughout the novel he seems at best disorientated and a little unfortunate. He experiences his comrades struggling with their new found identities, and seems to loose a little of his own along the way.

This novel has much less urgency and much more horror than it’s predecessor, Your Brother’s Blood thrives off of Thomas carrying his young daughter across the unforgiving waste while being pursued by those that would kill them both. But now the McDermott’s stake claim on a piece of land as a family and Thomas begins his unyielding work at building them a home. However, the pace lulls you into a false sense of security, it promises that the threats faced in the first novel are extinguished and gives you hope for the McDermott family. But this is all a rouse and slight of hand on Towsey’s part, letting him successfully drop bombshells on you while you are fumbling in the dark.

This novel is again wonderfully written, characters are strong and rich and there is no doubt about that they show more of their character through actions than the reader being told who they are. The ending of the novel leaves several strands open for the final part of the trilogy which I am eager to follow, although I am riddled with anxiety over what this novel will bring!

Your Servants and Your People plays it’s cards very close to the chest, but when they are laid down to be examined we see that this is a world where the unexpected happens and nobody is safe from it. This is a very good sequel and I again recommend this trilogy for it’s enigmatic narrative and the strength of it’s characters.

33. Your Brother’s Blood

Oh hey! I bet you’d thought I’d vanished for good right? Wrong. Here I am, it’s been a really busy month finishing off my dissertation and I had very little energy for anything else. But while battling through my month the book I chose to see me through was incredibly well written and a very good choice. Your Brother’s Blood is something I’ve been meaning to read for a very long time, I am a little biased because I know the author, but I am so glad I finally got around to this novel.

Your Brother’s Blood – David Towsey

Your Brother’s Blood is an exceptionally vivid novel. Through my busy month it was a very easy novel to dip in and out of and remember where I was. It’s elegantly written and a little playful at times. But Towsey has a masterful grasp on his writing style, it grips you, it is Bradbury-like in how vivid and surprising it can be, and it never feels overwritten or long winded. Images are exciting, engaging and generally this is an economic book that achieves an enormous amount in a short space.

When I say this is a zombie novel, do not mistake me – this is no ordinary zombie novel. This is an exciting read because it is far from ordinary. It is not your typical ‘we’ve sodded up the earth and now a virus is making people eat people’ narrative. No no, this novel is set a hundred years from now in a western, cowboy style America and is a little different.

Technology has vanished almost all together and humanity has continued on in a revived Old West where the relics of the Automated Age have no place. As such the small town of Barkley is like something out of a John Wayne movie, if that John Wayne movie was subjected to a severe religious doctrine. Yes! There are spitting gunslingers who you will love every inch of. Yes! There are some characters who will make your skin crawl. But the religious frame work was really something I did not expect at all from this novel and it is utterly brilliant. I feel this is something very difficult to do well and Towsey absolutely achieves it with flying psychedelic colours.

So what’s going on then? Okay, where do I start?

Sarah McDermott is living the nightmare of loosing her husband to a Civil War. Her and her daughter Mary, are surviving grief and the day to day of running their shop. But little do they know that Thomas was indeed one of many casualties in his particular battle but the bodies haven’t been disposed of correctly in his mass grave. So Thomas wakes as a Walkin’ (zombie), he is slight burnt, confused, and very different from your typical brains eating guy.

Thomas can feel no pain, he cannot dream, he doesn’t need to eat or sleep and he won’t die again unless he is burnt or beheaded. But he has all of his memories, he remembers being alive, he remembers his family and everything up until the moment he dies. This significant change into his second life, is also wracked with choices. (Very much like being a graduate.)

Does he try to take his own life now he has become what his small religious town has taught him is evil and wrong? Does he even try to go back to his family? Does he take a new direction with his new found second life and bumble around looking for purpose? (Honestly, so so much like being a graduate… wait… am I a Walkin’?) His choices mount up while he explores the damage to his body which have to be some of my favourite descriptions of a zombie corpse ever. I haven’t found more satisfying descriptions of a bayonet wound.

When he does eventually limp back to town he risks dragging his entire family into a battle of ambitions, religious ideas, and world views. Thomas of course has to go on the run and is pursued by a posse that couldn’t highlight this conflict better, a religious acolyte ready for blood, his own brother Samuel, the reluctant Grave Keeper, and the Law-Man. There is a lot going on in this novel and it is great!

He spins a wonderful yarn. Rich characters that are well thought out and as believable as his world. There is also a very well balanced view of humanity the good, the bad and the ugly (No I couldn’t resist. Not apologising). But also there is real success within Your Brother’s Blood to give dignity to the Walkin’ and in encouraging questions as to who the monsters really are in this novel.

If you can’t tell, I really enjoyed it, and I’d read it again. I’ve been telling everyone I can about it. I’ve also bought the second in the trilogy so prepare yourself there is so much more to come.