The Land of the Beautiful Dead by R. Lee Smith

Land of the Beautiful Dead is an epic horror tale of a post-apocalyptic Earth where the dead, don’t stay dead. Land of the Beautiful Dead is not just a zombie horror tale. The Eaters are given a new perspective to us readers by making us relate to their survivors. These are not just mindless, dead, eating machines, they are our beloved dead. They are our mothers, fathers, sons and daughters and that relationship is the true horror that runs through every element of R Lee Smith’s tale.

What happens when our beloved dead, do not stay dead? How do we cope with death when our rituals are stripped from us? Lanachee, Lan for short, loses her mother to a violent death. Lan only knows this because people in her world don’t stay dead, they rise up again as mindless eaters. Losing her mother to murder was hard enough but having to break her back and burn her on a pyre brings Lan to new depths of horror. Lan decides then and there she will travel to Haven and ask the Lord of the Dead, Azrael, to end the eaters. Lan’s journey brings us through a hellscape of inbred villages, prostitution as a necessary means of commerce, and a land stripped bare of any human decency, or any decency at all. When she finally arrives in Haven, she has to sneak into the Palace where she is discovered and brought before Azrael. She quickly discovers that her lack of education and manners, two things that were the first to collapse under Ariel’s rule, have left her woefully unprepared to face The Lord of the Dead.

Land of the Beautiful Dead does not follow any typical book tropes. Lan is not some spunky, defiant protagonist whose sassiness and bravery win the day. She is a very flawed, extraordinarily complex and human character. Lan’s point of view throughout the book undergoes a gradual change as she interacts with Azrael and her tutor Mr. Wickham. Lan never loses the core of who she is as a person, but rather R. Lee Smith manages to build her character’s complexity over the course of Lan’s “lessons”. Showing a very real to life awakening of consciousness and awareness of a bigger world and her place in it. While Lan is being changed by Azrael and his court of Beautiful Dead people, Azrael is being changed by Lan. Lan shows Azrael that life outside of Haven has become a horror unimaginable. His eaters are a punishment so horrific that human civilization has not just collapsed but ground to a halt. The very accomplishments that he seeks to preserve in Haven have fallen to myth and legend outside of Haven’s walls. Only the old people even remember what electric light was and Lan’s own mother was a child when the world fell.

Through the hellscape of post-apocalyptic Earth Lan teaches Azrael empathy for the living and comes to understand death in all its many forms. The death of ideas, the death of the mind, the soul, and the body. The Land of the Beautiful Dead is a poignant and beautifully heartbreaking tale of life, death, and all the moments that make both worth it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Every moment between the characters in this story felt genuine and real.  I laughed out loud and cried real tears throughout this story. Lan and all the characters in 'Land of the Beautiful Dead' felt like real people. Seraphina, the spiteful handmaiden, became one of my favorite frenemy relationships in the book. Lan and Seraphina play off each other so well that it felt like a genuine connection between the two. I very much looked forward to their moments of spiteful dialogue. Their friendship is prickly and built on a foundation of dislike and yet Lan is loyal to Seraphina and their strange friendship.

Mr. Wickham fast became one of my favorite characters in this book. His wisdom and insight into Lan is our guide through Lan’s character development. Through Mr. Wickham we get to see Lan’s gradual shift from antagonist to acceptance and of course his love of architecture is one of the best running jokes throughout the book.

Everyone in Haven from the Steward to Mr. Wickham brings color, vibrancy, and complexity to R Lee Smith’s tale of life, death and all the moments in between.