1. The reader didn't enjoy it as much as [b:Let the Right One In|943402|Let the Right One In|John Ajvide Lindqvist|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327893384s/943402.jpg|928338].Which is fair enough. Personal tastes vary, and [i]Let the Right One In[/i] was a pretty good debut.

2. The book’s premise is that the dead are “waking up”. However it didn't feature any standard zombies trailing about moaning "brains" repeatedly and infecting people with their living-deadness. This doesn’t seem a problem to me. In fact I would consider the lack of standard template zombies a blessing. I can't think of many things more boring than reading 400 pages of what would essentially be a novelisation of a George A Romero movie.

Personally, I found this to be well-written and readable, and I'm surprised so many people rated it so poorly. I certainly wouldn't dream of suggesting that it's inferior to the self-obsessed and derivative babbling of Stephen King. Granted if you're looking for an apocalyptic tale of zombie mayhem then you will be disappointed, but the novel stands up well as an exploration of humanity's fear of death, isolation and itself. Plus it does feature enough roaming corpses, unquiet graves, dismemberment and such to satisfy any horror fan who doesn't expect wall-to-wall gruesome slaughter, and prefers to have their scenes of horror interspaced with plot and character. Certainly it isn’t a perfect book. The dénouement isn’t very inspiring and some parts are a little slow. But overall a pretty solid 3 stars.