It's finally time for me to admit something, I am a book cover whore. There now that it's out in the open I feel better! I absolutely love a book with a good cover. I cannot resist seeing a cover from across the bookstore that just scream "Read me, look at this fantastic cover!" This book had one of those covers for me. You have the blues and purples with splashes of green peeking out at you from the darkness. And when you look closer, you realize the picture is not quite what it seems at first glance, the car is hovering and then my interest took hold and the book came home with me.
Necropolis has just about everything you could want from a dystopian crime novel. Retro people who insist on talking like a Soprano's episode in one area of town and another is like walking into the Cleavers home. You have zombies, well sort of zombies in that they are dead people who are alive again but they call then reborns. You have a detective who is just about as cliche as can be, drinking trouble, marriage on the rocks, and truckloads of denial. This is the strange story of Paul Donner, and then he gets shot. But dying is really just the beginning of his story when he comes back as a reborn, thanks to an even known as The Shift, and becomes determined to solve the crime that left he and his wife dead all those years ago.
I really loved this story for a lot of different reasons. The world it takes place in was well built and explained in such a way that it was easy to picture it in my head. The plot was fascinating, and while much of it was a bit predictable there was at least one huge aspect of the plot that completely blindsided me.
You may be wondering then, if she loved this book so much why only give it 3 stars? Well, I will tell you. While the constant changing of point of view was well explained and easy to follow, it took something away from the story for me. I would get so involved in one person's narrative and then BAM we're being narrated by someone else. It took me out of the story and so I kept getting confused and distracted from the most interesting parts of the story. Then you have the future world lingo. A lot of it was left unexplained and so I had to just shrug and guess about what we were talking about. I don't like having to guess. If you want to make up words that's fine, but at least tell me what they mean. Overall a really good first novel that I enjoyed a lot, it just didn't quite make my favorites list.
Note: Reviews also posted to Goodreads profile.
Necropolis has just about everything you could want from a dystopian crime novel. Retro people who insist on talking like a Soprano's episode in one area of town and another is like walking into the Cleavers home. You have zombies, well sort of zombies in that they are dead people who are alive again but they call then reborns. You have a detective who is just about as cliche as can be, drinking trouble, marriage on the rocks, and truckloads of denial. This is the strange story of Paul Donner, and then he gets shot. But dying is really just the beginning of his story when he comes back as a reborn, thanks to an even known as The Shift, and becomes determined to solve the crime that left he and his wife dead all those years ago.
I really loved this story for a lot of different reasons. The world it takes place in was well built and explained in such a way that it was easy to picture it in my head. The plot was fascinating, and while much of it was a bit predictable there was at least one huge aspect of the plot that completely blindsided me.
You may be wondering then, if she loved this book so much why only give it 3 stars? Well, I will tell you. While the constant changing of point of view was well explained and easy to follow, it took something away from the story for me. I would get so involved in one person's narrative and then BAM we're being narrated by someone else. It took me out of the story and so I kept getting confused and distracted from the most interesting parts of the story. Then you have the future world lingo. A lot of it was left unexplained and so I had to just shrug and guess about what we were talking about. I don't like having to guess. If you want to make up words that's fine, but at least tell me what they mean. Overall a really good first novel that I enjoyed a lot, it just didn't quite make my favorites list.
Note: Reviews also posted to Goodreads profile.
