3.5 rounded down because it took me so damn long to read it. I believe in print format it's 560 pages. It was 502 on my tablet, and I don't think the length was warranted. Still and all, it's a powerful story about injustice and rage, and timely for its vaccine-related plot. You'll want to have read Dread Nation first because Deathless is mostly recurring characters whose development is crucial to the story.

Protagonist Jane McKeene pretty much goes from one zombie apocalypse to the next. She has to do one very bad thing for someone she loves, which leads her to doing bad things to people she doesn't, and who might, in the context of 19th century frontier justice, deserve it. In her afterword, Ireland shares that part of her mission in writing this novel is putting Black people back in the history of the American West. She accomplishes this goal and also peoples her novel with American Indians and Chinese, as well as whites. Because I know a little of her history in YA Twitter, calling out and being called out, I wonder if some of the elements of Deathless are Easter eggs for those in the know.