Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Books read in 2013: No. 45 -- De Bello Lemures, Or The Roman War Against the Zombies of Armorica

by Thomas Brookside

Started: August 27
Finished: August 28

Notes: I've been putting off reading this e-book for a good long while now. Why? Delaying gratification, I suppose. See, this novel contains two of my favorite things, ancient Romans and zombies, so what could go wrong? Also, apparently the author meant this book to be an homage of sorts of modern (as in the last century or so) translations and publications of ancient, classical writings by historical Romans. As someone who has read more than his share of such works, I should find it interesting how a modern author goes about this. Even the cover to this e-book is designed to look something like Penguin Classics I've perused over the last few decades, especially during my college days.

Mini review: This was actually a pretty good story. I liked the way it unfolded, and the prose. I also appreciated all the footnotes, some of which did not actually need explaining to me but some that did. My biggest complaint was that the story didn't really end. I'm reading along just fine, really into the tail, and then it's all over in a matter of a page or two. There could have been so much more, and I would have definitely been interested in reading more. But it is what it is. What's there is fine, bordering on excellent, but I wish there'd been more of it.

2 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

I'm reading a kind of strange zombie story right now by Walter M. Miller. Pretty good stuff.

Ty said...

I might have to check out Miller. My next read is a zombie book, as well. I love a good zombie story, but I admit there's a lot of bad zombie fiction out there.