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Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand |
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Nekropolis by Tim Waggoner Angry Robot Supplied for review by Harper Collins New Zealand |
Reviewed By: Simon Litten |
| Nekropolis is an expanded reworking of Tim
Waggoner’s Necropolis (first published in 2004), and is a
standalone story (with sequels suggested). Mr Waggoner has several novels and short
stories to his credit. Nekropolis concerns the self aware zombie private investigator Matt Richter in his adventures with his latest case: helping Devona Kanti the natural born vampire child of Lord Galm, one of the founders of Nekropolis. The adventures introduce the reader to nearly all the major players in the city by way of a spirited search and chase through the various districts (each ruled by one of the founding lords) until the object of the search is recovered and a fiendish plot (what else in a city of the undead and the damned?) to ruin the city is foiled. Mr Waggoner is an experienced author, so I was expecting something with a bit more substance than what I actually got. Nekropolis had its origins in a Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) roleplaying game and, to the detriment of the story, at times this shows, especially as the action passed through the different lord’s realms. I am ambivalent towards this book. On one hand it was a fast paced action adventure with some well placed satire at the expense of the common tropes of zombie and vampire stories; and on the other it was a predictable read with little in the way of characterisation and thus character development – what your saw was what you got. All in all a good read, nothing brilliant, but suitable for a long journey where interruptions abound or the start of a long holiday when the act of reading can be very tiring. An appetiser of a book if not a main course. |
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