Death is a Welcome Guest

Published: 2015
Author: Louise Welsh

A great follow-up – looking forward to part 3 of the trilogy

A while back I read Louise Welsh’s A Lovely Way to Burn, the first book in her Plague Times trilogy. I was in a bit of blogging slump at the time so didn’t review, if I had it would have been a solid 4 ribbon read. The book follows Stevie Flint as she survives an illness known as the Sweats which kills the majority of the world’s population while investigating the death of her boyfriend, a doctor who may have had important information about the spread of the Sweats. I was really excited to receive a copy of the second instalment, Death is a Welcome Guest and looked forward to seeing what was next in the storyline.

Orcadian stand-up comedian Magnus McFall is about to make it big. He is supporting one of the country’s biggest acts at the o2 and it seems that fame and fortune will soon be his when the world turns upside down. People start to fall ill around him and his attempt at protecting a young woman from attack leads him to Pentonville. As the Sweats take hold, Magnus and cellmate Jeb Soames must find a way out of jail and to safety.

Death is a Welcome Guest is a great follow up to A Lovely Way to Burn, it inhabits the same world as Stevie’s story but doesn’t cut across it. Taken in conjunction with its predecessor it really does help to build a well rounded portrait of a country in chaos, with scared survivors desperate to both stay safe and rebuild society, even if that leads to violence and recriminations. Magnus was a great lead character, he seemed very real – an everyman who makes mistakes caught in an unimaginable situation. I really liked the character of Jeb, I won’t go into why he was in prison or what his back story was as it was great to see it unfold through Magnus’s eyes but it felt utterly real and contemporary, despite the apocalyptic setting.

It’s a strength of the books that although the action is set sometime in the future, it isn’t a distant future. In my head it’s 2020 – close enough to be a recognisable society, but still almost half a decade away so not an immediate threat. Death is a Welcome Guest, like A Lovely Way to Burn, also has a murder story and effortlessly ties together the dystopian and the crime genres for a fascinating read.

I’m not sure when the third part of the trilogy is released but I’m already desperate to read it. I want to see Stevie and Magnus’s stories come together, although I’m not sure where the narrative is going next. Will it be a focus on a cure to the Sweats? Or looking at the rebuilding of society in a just manner? The conclusion of the Plague Times trilogy is an exciting prospect and I’m really looking forward to reading it.