A scantily clad female gladiator trying her best to look like Racquel Welch in ‘One Million Years BC’ (which I really need to watch again sometime soon...) can only mean one thing. Yes, Abaddon have a new book out and this time it’s for their ‘Tomes of the Dead’ range, tales of humanity under attack from the ravening (and brain eating...) hordes of the undead...
This week has been all about ‘quick reads on the tube’ for me and, at roughly three hundred and fifty pages long, ‘Anno Mortis’ managed to sneak into that category! Work has left me feeling a little out of it and not really up for getting into anything too heavy and Abaddon are usually good for those kinds of books as well.
All in all I thought I’d be onto a winner with ‘Anno Mortis’ and for the most part I was. It wasn’t all plain sailing though...
It’s 40AD and the mad Emperor Caligula rules over the Roman Empire with a grip that is demented as he is. If this wasn’t bad enough, things are starting to happen in the backstreets and catacombs that, if left unchecked, will spell disaster for the empire. Slaves are disappearing and so are the bodies of the dead. And what are the mysterious shipments that arrive from Egypt in the dead of night?
A mad emperor’s dreams lead to chaos and blood on the streets of Rome; only a gladiator, a spoilt young noble and a mysterious stranger stand any chance of setting things right before death spreads out from the Empire and engulfs the world...
I tore through ‘Anno Mortis’ in just over a day’s commute and normally that’s a good sign as it means that the book has totally held my attention and I’m desperate to see how things turn out before I get off the train. Well, that’s usually the case but this time I found myself skimming through pages where not an awful lot was going on to get to the bits where something was happening. For every ‘breakneck’ passage that got the blood pumping it felt like there were pages saying, “something great is going to happen but not quite yet, it’ll take a while but... stick around anyway?” Chases through catacombs seemed to drag out longer than necessary and (apart from some notable execeptions, more on those later) the book runs into difficulty trying to maintain tension when characters are being pursued by the undead, most of whom can’t actually run that fast...
When things do get going though ‘Anno Mortis’ is just the kind of light reading that I’m after with a plot full of clever twists and spectacle. I’m slowly working my way through a lot of zombie fiction but one thing that I haven’t come across until now is zombie chariot racers... Don’t think about it too much; just go with it, it’s well worth the trip. Levene’s answer to the stalemate resulting from the undead not being able to scale Rome’s high walls also deserves a mention (as I think it’s genius). Catapult one of the living over a wall and you’re going to kill them, catapult a zombie over a wall...
If all this isn’t enough then there is plenty of ‘backs to the wall facing down hundreds of the undead’ slice and dice action that any fan of the series (so far) will definitely appreciate. The mixing of Norse and Egyptian legends, to create an all encompassing world view (for the enemy to go up against) is also cleverly done and makes for interesting reading.
The biggest problem that ‘Anno Mortis’ has is a ‘stop/start’ approach to pacing that left me flicking through what felt (at times) like a lot of unnecessary filler. Once you get past this though, ‘Anno Mortis’ does what Abaddon books do best and offers a gory slice of zombie action that made my commute that little bit more bearable...
Seven and a Half out of Ten
Looks interesting, maybe try this one. thanks.
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