Description:
Death is only the beginning.
Zita Chang, Associate Marketing Manager at the Nine Circles, the only theme park devoted to dying, death, and the afterlife, is just another cog in a corporate machine. Determined not to let her grief over her father's death interfere with work, she takes advantage of an employee perk: asking the Afterlife team to replace Siri with his voice so he can dispense the advice she never wanted while he was alive.
But when the Executive Director dies under mysterious circumstances weeks before the company's grand opening, Zita and her coworkers are tasked with programming his reanimated body to keep the launch on schedule. As more colleagues turn up dead, Zita must untangle the mystery in this strange, beautiful celebration of life and death, revolt and redemption.
Brief description:
DORETTA LAU started watching horror movies at age nine and sketch comedy at eleven, which was probably why she ended up completing an MFA in Writing at Columbia University. She spent her days in New York working in children's publishing and her nights watching musicians work out their inner demons. As a journalist in Hong Kong, she wrote about arts and culture for Artforum, Wall Street Journal Asia, and South China Morning Post. The Atlantic named her short story collection, How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?, as a best book of 2014. The title story was shortlisted for the 2013 Writers' Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. She is currently developing projects for film and television. We Are Underlings is her first novel. Visit dorettalau.com.
Review Quotes:
"A biting workplace satire, where humanity's deepest fear becomes the hottest new business venture." --Maria Reva, author of Endling