Occasionally in the past, Deathlands titles have strayed into other parts of the world - trips to Russia, Japan, and Mexico come to mind - but those have been the result of mat-trans jumps and tended to offer only a tiny local view of the area visited. With Dark Resurrection the series explores a large region of southern Mexico and Central America. The book picks up three weeks after the end of Plague Lords, with the companions barely surviving as slave labor rowing the Matachin galleys that destroyed Padre Island at the climax of the previous books. The book moves from Veracruz to Panama and ultimately to Xibalba itself for a final showdown with the Lords of Death.
Where previous Deathlands "duologies" have generally tended to be more along the lines of two or three loosely related stories, Plague Lords and Dark Resurrection really read as a single 700 page novel. There is plenty of a action to go around, but there is also an infusion of interesting ideas and locales into the storyline. One only hopes that those ideas will be picked up on by other authors in the series and explored more fully.
I also really enjoyed the character of Daniel Desipio, once the author of dozens of trashy pulp post-apocalyptic novels in the fictional Slaughter Realms series and now the vector for releasing a terrible plague. The metaphor was not lost on me, and even though he was thoroughly despicable as a person I still enjoyed the heck out the wonderful absurdity of the Slaughter Realms books.
There was a healthy dose of meaty subtext to this story, far beyond what one expects from a series like Deathlands, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.