Toys for the Dead

Toys for the Dead was not the original title of this piece. At one point was trying to work my way through all the vowels. So there was the Accursed trilogy (Accursed, Underbelly and Eidolon) and then Georges' tales begin with Oblivion followed by Infamia.

Do still quite like the title of Infamia though think Toys for the Dead is slightly better. Infamia relates only to the Ulrich Deiss strand. Toys for the Dead lends itself to the zombie theme more.

At one point all five titles were available as one download. Instead I've now collected this with several other stories featuring Georges which fit together better rather than merging the different series'.

For a book that's a lot shorter than most of my others prior to this, there's a lot going on in this one. Everything is connected in a way, but a lot of strands are juggled. Terrorists, zombies, a pedophile immortal, a prophet, a dreamwitch, an empath, plus the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle... it's all very busy. While I am happy with the finished product, if I were to do it again I'd probably strip things back a little.

Confession time - when I wrote Eidolon the concept of zombies was written off as a myth, which was a rule I intended to keep in place. It affected how James Grey handled the threat of the apparent walking undead and presented a completely different riddle to dealing with the real thing. This book establishes the possibility of zombies in a specific instance. The prime zombie, the self-aware Grace, has returned due to extenuating circumstances unlikely to be replicated. While this still does not fully answer why Laura misled James, the other books show she has form for doing so. Yep, I'm going with that.

With the exception of the tableaux vivants, which should have been shocking at any time, the 1900 World Fair does intrigue me greatly.

Zylphia's return allows me to do more with the realm of dreams, which I enjoy doing greatly.