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Dec232009
Christmas Week Book Review: I Am Scrooge – A Zombie Story for Christmas by Adam Roberts
Title: I Am Scrooge – A Zombie Story for Christmas
Author: Adam Roberts
Publisher: Gollancz
Publication Date: 1 Oct 2009
Hardback: 153 pages
Genre: Horror, Comedy
Rating: 6/10
Summary (book cover)
Marley was dead, to begin with… The legendary Ebenezeer Scrooge sits in his house, his riches forgotten. Downstairs, his front door shudders and shakes under the blows from the zombies that crowd around it hungering for his flesh and his miserly braaaaiiiinns!
Just how did the happiest day of the year slip into a welter of blood, innards and shambling, ravenous undead on the snowy streets of old London town? Will the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future be able to stop the world from drowning under a top-hatted and crinolined zombie horde? Does mankind’s survival lie in the hands of one literature’s scrawniest and meanest heros? And is H.G. Wells in the wrong book altogether?
Review:
What can I say about this book? It’s certainly different… gory… entertaining. A story based on Dicken’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ with brain eating zombies, what’s not to like? Sounds like a great fun read. Well, it was, to a point.
I really enjoyed the atmosphere of Victorian London and the imagery was really good, I could definitely see the detail in my mind of the zombies gorging on brains. However, there were a lot of jokes with the intention of making the reader laugh which failed for me. After a while they just had my eyes rolling to the heavens and wishing they would just stop coming. It was amusing at first but quickly lost its appeal.
There was also too much going on, with the addition of time-travel thrown into the mix, it made the story a little bit jumbled and hard to follow. The spirits were distinctive though and each one had it’s own way of speaking, as you would think coming from completely different times. But I found Christmas Future difficult to understand. This was completely intentional, as Scrooge couldn’t understand him either and in return Christmas Future had a book-of-phrases to help him communicate and understand Scrooge. This was quite a funny moment in the book and I did appreciate the humour, but then it went too far and I didn’t understanding anything Christmas Future was saying at all:
“‘Nah, nah, nah, nah. My bruv been done gone. I can see wiv eyes, and the third, the third. There’s a bacon on the bush, there’s a chris that crossed, dig dag dug. Speak-n-spell. Get low in the ghetto, the lies buried in da library, ouch!-ouch! is the hierophant of an unapprehended futurity – word!’“
“‘For the jam of shoreline!’ the Spirit said. ‘When you hang with a necker, you hang – yeah? Ain’t no ting, cept when the gin-a-body ups the 8o8, you get me?…’“
No, I don’t, and sadly this is where the story lost me. I kept reading because I rarely give up on a book and I was intrigued as to how it would end. But even that was a bit of a let down.
Verdict:
This book has its moments. As a zombie fan I appreciated the gore and the eating of brains. I really enjoyed the Dickensian atmosphere and at times it did have me smiling. But overall, it was just a bit odd.
This book is from my personal library
12 Comments
Yikes not my type of read lol
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Oh my goodness! I had no idea this existed. I'll have to pick this up for my husband, who is a huge zombie fan, and see what he thinks of it. Thanks for the review
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Zombies are clearly taking over the publisher world!
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I am a bit baffled about the current trend to "zombify" a classic book. I personally love the mix of horror and humor together, but why not simply write a new and original story? Why zombify a classic? I am wondering if this trend is going to run out of steam soon.
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I was hoping you would enjoy this a little more. It is neat to read stories recreated like this. Oh well, sounds like an interesting read.
Thanks for the review!
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When I first saw the review, I was thinking how cool. Then I read the review and I'm now left with a feeling of wanting to read the book but at some point in the distant future. Great review.
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Aw.. hoped you'd like it more too. Sounds like a great idea anyway.
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Neat idea, but it doesn't sound like it worked very well. I'm reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies right now, and I think I'll have my fill of zombies gorging on brains when I'm finished with it.
–Anna
Diary of an Eccentric
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Just popping in to say HAPPY HOLIDAYS to you and yours!! Have a good one!
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Interesting premise, but I don't think it's for me. Liked your review, as I hadn't heard of this one before. Thanks!
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I'm with you. The original is great but this is WAY too hard to understand.
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