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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
I feel it is important to note that I am not really a zombie fan. This is my first zombie book, and aside from 28 Days Later, I'm not a big zombie movie watcher.
But this book was great. For some reason, I saw it at B&N, and after reading the back, convinced myself that this was a must-read.
There are several quips and quotes Andy, the zombie-narrator, imparts to us. Most noteably haikus about decaying, rotting flesh and a series of "If you've never ___________, you wouldn't understand." (Fill in the blank with description of zombie experiences of being mutaliated/beaten with your own dismembered limbs/ or even just the speed at which one decomposes.) He's out to help all zombie-kind, and get some zombie tail while at it.
The ending was not what I expected, but it was a great, fun read. Who would think a zombie book could be so hilarious and light?
This is a good read, even for those of us who aren't into zombie lit.
But this book was great. For some reason, I saw it at B&N, and after reading the back, convinced myself that this was a must-read.
There are several quips and quotes Andy, the zombie-narrator, imparts to us. Most noteably haikus about decaying, rotting flesh and a series of "If you've never ___________, you wouldn't understand." (Fill in the blank with description of zombie experiences of being mutaliated/beaten with your own dismembered limbs/ or even just the speed at which one decomposes.) He's out to help all zombie-kind, and get some zombie tail while at it.
The ending was not what I expected, but it was a great, fun read. Who would think a zombie book could be so hilarious and light?
This is a good read, even for those of us who aren't into zombie lit.
This book was good fun. I read it awhile ago, but I remember it being funny and a light hearted read. If you're a "horror only" zombie lover, don't read this book. It's meant for humor more than it is gore and horror. I don't like romances, but this one was a pretty solid read. It was a quick read and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
(2.25 Stars)
I think I know what the author was trying to do, but I think it fell short. It wasn't that it was bad, it was just that it wasn't good. The book was written from the perspective of a zombie male in their early 30's, but seemed to be more like what a 16 year old thinks a 30 year old acts and thinks like. The main character has the mentality of a rebellious teenager, which might be partially intended, but I don't think it was...
I also had a very hard time with the equating "Zombie" civil rights with that of marginalized groups in America. And the not-so-subtle anti-Trans statements put me over the edge.
The mechanics of the book were good, the characters did develop and each had their own personality... But, the world was unrealistic and juvenile.
I think I know what the author was trying to do, but I think it fell short. It wasn't that it was bad, it was just that it wasn't good. The book was written from the perspective of a zombie male in their early 30's, but seemed to be more like what a 16 year old thinks a 30 year old acts and thinks like. The main character has the mentality of a rebellious teenager, which might be partially intended, but I don't think it was...
I also had a very hard time with the equating "Zombie" civil rights with that of marginalized groups in America. And the not-so-subtle anti-Trans statements put me over the edge.
The mechanics of the book were good, the characters did develop and each had their own personality... But, the world was unrealistic and juvenile.
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
This one had good timing. There's a lot going on and very little to chuckle over. It was nice to read something light but interesting, parts that made me chuckle and a few where I full on laughed-out-loud.
A decent example of zombie fiction, funny and creative, but somewhat marred by some really unfortunate writing decisions (if you haven't read the book, you wouldn't understand) and what feels like unnecessary location-dropping (is there such a thing?) that was out of place and jarring.
dark
funny
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
A zombie point of view story where the zombies are getting “better”? I am sensing a trend…
“Meet Andy Warner, a recently deceased everyman and newly minted zombie. Resented by his parents, abandoned by his friends, and reviled by a society that no longer considers him human, Andy is having a bit of trouble adjusting to his new existence. But all that changes when he goes to an Undead Anonymous meeting and finds kindred souls in Rita, an impossibly sexy recent suicide with a taste for the formaldehyde in cosmetic products, and Jerry, a twenty-one-year-old car-crash victim with an exposed brain and a penchant for Renaissance pornography. When the group meets a rogue zombie who teaches them the joys of human flesh, things start to get messy, and Andy embarks on a journey of self-discovery that will take him from his casket to the SPCA to a media-driven class-action lawsuit on behalf of the rights of zombies everywhere. Darkly funny, surprisingly touching, and gory enough to satisfy even the most discerning reader, Breathers is a romantic zombie comedy (rom-zom-com, for short) that will leave you laughing, squirming, and clamoring for more.”
Let me preface this review with this little back story.
Me reading this book is a case of cover love. I just thought it was so clever and cute. And I have an affinity for covers. A stellar cover is usually a determining factor in me picking out books to read (i.e. Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instrument series). So I put this book in my GoodReads list of “to-read” and my dear friend Jenn (who is my Zombie Apocalypse Sister in Arms) told me in a few words, I have this book, you can borrow it, but don’t get your hopes up. I should have taken this as a warning.
The idea of Breathers is good. Clever even. And the writing is pretty decent. There’s a bit more humor in this zombie POV than in Warm Bodies (see my review on my blog!). And that’s where my praise for this book ends. Yeah. Sorry Mr. Browne. I had a hard time getting into this book. It was just sort of blasé. Oh! Good word! Anyway…I’m going to break down this review by what this book promised to deliver on and fell short on doing.
1. “Darkly Funny.” Now, don’t get me wrong, folks who are fans of this book, there were some funny parts in this book that made me chuckle. But most of the time I was too busy trying to decided if I should feel bad for Andy for the stuff him and zombie-kind put up with, or smack him like a bitch because he’s acting like one. There is only some much “but you would only understand if you were a zombie” to describe how it is to be a zombie. Honestly, see it as a cop-out for trying to weave emotions into a zombie and making us, the readers, understand.
2. “Surprisingly touching.” Really? Are you sure? Are those zombie support meetings that Andy goes to suppose to make us feel a deeper connection to zombie-kind because honestly, I was left not feeling surprisingly touched, but more bored. I suppose having Andy and the others start to magically “heal” and the emotions of dealing and then to have Fate piss all over it could be seen as touching, but I just couldn’t get behind Andy as a hero. I get that his life sucks, but dude, really? Grow a pair of balls and be a George Romero zombie for Christ sake!
3. “Gory enough to satisfy even the most discerning reader.” Liar, liar, pants on fire! Yeah, the zombies eat people. But where’s the fury? The hunger? The natural urge for survival? Oh wait. It’s totally not there. There is only one scene where Andy finally acts like a zombie and chomps on his psychiatrists face. The rest of the time, Andy and company are feasting on “Breathers” like they are at some family get together. Just because zombies are eating regular humans, doesn’t mean that it is gory. Gross? Yes. Gory? Well, let’s just say that I think whoever wrote the little review didn’t look up the word gory.
Can you tell I was totally unimpressed with this book? I have no problem with the idea of a zombie POV novel, I don’t. And I’m sure S.G. Browne is a lovely man. He can totally write. It’s good. I just think this one fell kind of short of the finishing line.
Sorry Mr. Browne…
“Meet Andy Warner, a recently deceased everyman and newly minted zombie. Resented by his parents, abandoned by his friends, and reviled by a society that no longer considers him human, Andy is having a bit of trouble adjusting to his new existence. But all that changes when he goes to an Undead Anonymous meeting and finds kindred souls in Rita, an impossibly sexy recent suicide with a taste for the formaldehyde in cosmetic products, and Jerry, a twenty-one-year-old car-crash victim with an exposed brain and a penchant for Renaissance pornography. When the group meets a rogue zombie who teaches them the joys of human flesh, things start to get messy, and Andy embarks on a journey of self-discovery that will take him from his casket to the SPCA to a media-driven class-action lawsuit on behalf of the rights of zombies everywhere. Darkly funny, surprisingly touching, and gory enough to satisfy even the most discerning reader, Breathers is a romantic zombie comedy (rom-zom-com, for short) that will leave you laughing, squirming, and clamoring for more.”
Let me preface this review with this little back story.
Me reading this book is a case of cover love. I just thought it was so clever and cute. And I have an affinity for covers. A stellar cover is usually a determining factor in me picking out books to read (i.e. Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instrument series). So I put this book in my GoodReads list of “to-read” and my dear friend Jenn (who is my Zombie Apocalypse Sister in Arms) told me in a few words, I have this book, you can borrow it, but don’t get your hopes up. I should have taken this as a warning.
The idea of Breathers is good. Clever even. And the writing is pretty decent. There’s a bit more humor in this zombie POV than in Warm Bodies (see my review on my blog!). And that’s where my praise for this book ends. Yeah. Sorry Mr. Browne. I had a hard time getting into this book. It was just sort of blasé. Oh! Good word! Anyway…I’m going to break down this review by what this book promised to deliver on and fell short on doing.
1. “Darkly Funny.” Now, don’t get me wrong, folks who are fans of this book, there were some funny parts in this book that made me chuckle. But most of the time I was too busy trying to decided if I should feel bad for Andy for the stuff him and zombie-kind put up with, or smack him like a bitch because he’s acting like one. There is only some much “but you would only understand if you were a zombie” to describe how it is to be a zombie. Honestly, see it as a cop-out for trying to weave emotions into a zombie and making us, the readers, understand.
2. “Surprisingly touching.” Really? Are you sure? Are those zombie support meetings that Andy goes to suppose to make us feel a deeper connection to zombie-kind because honestly, I was left not feeling surprisingly touched, but more bored. I suppose having Andy and the others start to magically “heal” and the emotions of dealing and then to have Fate piss all over it could be seen as touching, but I just couldn’t get behind Andy as a hero. I get that his life sucks, but dude, really? Grow a pair of balls and be a George Romero zombie for Christ sake!
3. “Gory enough to satisfy even the most discerning reader.” Liar, liar, pants on fire! Yeah, the zombies eat people. But where’s the fury? The hunger? The natural urge for survival? Oh wait. It’s totally not there. There is only one scene where Andy finally acts like a zombie and chomps on his psychiatrists face. The rest of the time, Andy and company are feasting on “Breathers” like they are at some family get together. Just because zombies are eating regular humans, doesn’t mean that it is gory. Gross? Yes. Gory? Well, let’s just say that I think whoever wrote the little review didn’t look up the word gory.
Can you tell I was totally unimpressed with this book? I have no problem with the idea of a zombie POV novel, I don’t. And I’m sure S.G. Browne is a lovely man. He can totally write. It’s good. I just think this one fell kind of short of the finishing line.
Sorry Mr. Browne…
"Breathers" seems like it should have been an easier read than it was. It has short chapters, and isn't particularly demanding, and the gross-out stuff wasn't all that gross. But I had a hard time getting into it, despite a long-term love of most things zombie. Like many other reviews note, the pop-culture references are nearly constant, which makes the writing feel pretty lazy--letting references to movies and TV do a lot of the work, or at least fill up a lot of the space. Having the narrator living in a wine cellar with a TV set allowed several pages of the book to be taken up with just the names of wines and TV shows/movies (although not all at once).
As other reviewers have also noted, there seems to be way too much of an attempt to emulate Chuck Palahniuk. But, as anyone who has read Pahlaniuk knows, Pahlaniuk's writing reaches depths of macabre humor and depravity that cannot be achieved in a work on a subject as mild as zombies. And Pahlaniuk's pop-culture references tend toward social critique, rather than hey-I-get-that-reference filler.
Which is not to say that Browne's book does not contain social critique. It does. Unfortunately, much of it is rather heavy-handed--having zombies caged by the SPCA when they get out of line, referencing Rosa Parks during a bus ride gone bad, and an especially annoying-bordering-on-offensive passage that enumerates the parallels between the zombies of "Breathers" and various members of minority groups in the history of the United States. It's as if Browne didn't expect his readers to pick up on the not-so-subtle social commentary without him spelling it all out.
In addition, the bulk of the "villains" were pretty flat--an uptight father and distant mother, an inattentive therapist, and frat boys.
And there were a number of things that just didn't make sense, like how the narrator could eat even though his face was too busted up to speak, and why the hot zombie chick was interested in the zombie guy whose face was so busted up that he couldn't speak. Also, given the alleged hysteria and discrimination aimed at the zombies, it seemed a bit of a stretch that, for instance, missing persons wouldn't automatically be attributed to foul play by zombies--and if the zombies are to blame, how the hell could they be getting away with it? Simply put, Browne frequently skates around things that need explaining. And providing the additional details would have helped steer away from that feeling of lazy writing and lazy plotting that pervades the book.
But perhaps the biggest problem with the book is that any sympathy that is built up for the zombies in the first half (which really isn't that much) is undone by the events of the second half, which would need to be a whole lot funnier and/or a whole lot more gruesome to hit the kind of payoff that a novel of this subject matter demands. Instead, Browne does not earn an emotional buy-in from the reader, so the more sentimental elements don't ring true, the comedy is merely amusing on occasion rather than riotously funny, and not a single gross-out element is actually disturbing enough to make a reader's skin crawl, much less to stay with the reader after the book is done.
As other reviewers have also noted, there seems to be way too much of an attempt to emulate Chuck Palahniuk. But, as anyone who has read Pahlaniuk knows, Pahlaniuk's writing reaches depths of macabre humor and depravity that cannot be achieved in a work on a subject as mild as zombies. And Pahlaniuk's pop-culture references tend toward social critique, rather than hey-I-get-that-reference filler.
Which is not to say that Browne's book does not contain social critique. It does. Unfortunately, much of it is rather heavy-handed--having zombies caged by the SPCA when they get out of line, referencing Rosa Parks during a bus ride gone bad, and an especially annoying-bordering-on-offensive passage that enumerates the parallels between the zombies of "Breathers" and various members of minority groups in the history of the United States. It's as if Browne didn't expect his readers to pick up on the not-so-subtle social commentary without him spelling it all out.
In addition, the bulk of the "villains" were pretty flat--an uptight father and distant mother, an inattentive therapist, and frat boys.
And there were a number of things that just didn't make sense, like how the narrator could eat even though his face was too busted up to speak, and why the hot zombie chick was interested in the zombie guy whose face was so busted up that he couldn't speak. Also, given the alleged hysteria and discrimination aimed at the zombies, it seemed a bit of a stretch that, for instance, missing persons wouldn't automatically be attributed to foul play by zombies--and if the zombies are to blame, how the hell could they be getting away with it? Simply put, Browne frequently skates around things that need explaining. And providing the additional details would have helped steer away from that feeling of lazy writing and lazy plotting that pervades the book.
But perhaps the biggest problem with the book is that any sympathy that is built up for the zombies in the first half (which really isn't that much) is undone by the events of the second half, which would need to be a whole lot funnier and/or a whole lot more gruesome to hit the kind of payoff that a novel of this subject matter demands. Instead, Browne does not earn an emotional buy-in from the reader, so the more sentimental elements don't ring true, the comedy is merely amusing on occasion rather than riotously funny, and not a single gross-out element is actually disturbing enough to make a reader's skin crawl, much less to stay with the reader after the book is done.
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes