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Recipe: Tim Waggoner's Nekropolis
Ingredients
- 4-6 Palladium Rifts sourcebooks (chef's choice, but the goofier, the better)
- 1 well-worn cardboard sleeve from a rental VHS tape of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
- 1 ridiculously naive and altogether useless ingenue straight from 1940s Central Casting
- 3 celluloid reels of Clive Barker's long-lost Nightbreed director's cut
- Tim Burton's oeuvre
- 1 cipher of a protagonist from the tritest pulp rag
- ½ Dumpster™-load of disused props from David Cronenberg's SFX team
- 1 tattered Mad Monster Party poster
Instructions: Throw ingredients in a blender. Hit puree. Consume. Feel hollow, then irritated, then angry. Regret your life choices.
—
—
Y'all already know how I enjoys me some undead literature. I also gobble up detective fiction, and get jazzed when it's slathered in the supernatural, like Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I., and Jim Butcher's Dresden Files.
Our lead—Matthew Richter, former cop, current "guy who does things for people" (he fights the "zombie private-eye" appellation at every turn)—is dull and plodding and repetitive and lifeless (beyond the literal) to the point it's outright explained as being part of his undead condition. Yet he knows everybody, because of course he does, and they all like him and owe him favors, because of course they do. And Richter's prepared for anything and everything with his utility belt gear-laden trenchcoat of holding.
Say, did I mention Richter was a cop? Because he sure does, about a thousand times.
Devona, the comely gal (like there could be any other kind in a book like this) who hires him, is the semi-spectral spawn of Vandal Savage-as-vampire-emperor. Yet for someone who's close to a century old and grew up amidst The Borgias Of Monsterburg, she's gallingly dewy-eyed and unworldly.
As for the setting, the eponymous Nekropolis is a techno-magical, alterno-dimensional mega-city set some 300+ years in the future after The Forces Of Darkness leave earth. Or something, as it's totally unclear when the book's actually happening, or the details behind the supernatural exodus, or why there's so many well-adjusted humans wandering around acting like everything's dandy. The environs are overstuffed with wyckyd-kewl things like gene-spliced lycan-chimeras and hologram-tech'd cyber-vampires and teevees-made-from-eyeballs and carnivorous vehicles and voodoo surgeons and satyr bouncers and tee-hee-hee-aren't-I-clever name-checked characters from other sources—Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man's daughter, DJ Phantom Of The Paradise, The Frankenstein Monster—because why the fuck not? The world-building aspects are straight-up disorienting and off-putting as there's just so much stuff.
Nekropolis is a cartoon.
A shitty one, at that.
—
The plot is as skeletal as the skull-faced bartender (named Skully, because of course he is) introduced on Page 1.
Zombie Non-P.I. needs money to pay his reanimating-mojo bills because, in the of hoariest of cop-related cliches, dude is literally two days from expirement. (I came up with that myself. Don't believe for a second that author was being clever and tweaking genre tropes.)
Dizzy dame shows up needing help finding The McGuffin.
So Thing 1 and Thing 2 wander from A to B to C, sightseeing Hellraiser-y landmarks and meeting weirdos with obnoxiously lazy pun-names (like Ichorus, a winged vampire. Ugh).
Said weirdos create conflict. Leaden banter ensues. Gadget pulled from trenchcoat. Conflict ends. Repeat ad nauseum.
During the lulls between non-fights, there's pathos-dripping ACTING! that'd make The Master Thespian know shame.
Romance happens between Richter and Devona, because of course it does, but it's hollow and groan-inducing. They share a mind-bond, you see, so that totally explains how they fall madly, deeply in love after only knowing each other one whole day.
Pages start to run out, so The McGuffin appears in the hands of The Villain. But it's a big non-climax, as our hero actually re-dies paving the way for the diabolus ex machina to handle things. Yep, Big-Willy of Nekropolis smites The Villain after the latter obligingly monologues...but it literally happens in the dark, so neither narrator nor reader know what goes down.
Maddening.
At least the eye-rolling tragic backstory involving Richter's dead African-American partner ends quickly enough, with nary a mention of him being too old for this shit.
There are over a dozen glaring grammatical errors: missing words, misspellings, sentence fragments, and misused punctuation. Clunky structures abound.
The zombie-thing is also a non-starter. Richter doesn't hunger for flesh or brains, or serve as the Haitian-slave of some occult practitioner. Nope, he's just dead (from a comic-booky accident), with the only real inconveniences being a lack of smell and taste, an unpleasant scent, and the occasional lost finger or ear (that gets reattached, of course). Why bother?
Oh, yeah. The very first wink-and-a-nod throwaway cameo? It's by a genre icon that's near and dear to my heart...and it fails miserably.
—
So, are there any redeeming factors?
I dig the cover. Wish it was on better contents.
One of the aforementioned weirdos—a randy, drug-dealing stick-bug named Morfran—was cool.
I guess some of the flesh-tech inventions are okay, like those Mind's Eye ocular sets that project directly into your brain, and jukeboxes that broadcast via singing heads. But the scabby computers that get real viruses and cellphones with jabbering mouths are ripped straight from Cronenberg. Been done, man.
And with the preponderance of trying-too-hard names, some gems slip through. Like, the country hoedown vampire bar named Westerna's made me grin...but in typing it out, I realize that it should be Westenra's. Sunnuvabitch. Waggoner can't even get his own lousy joke right.
—
I had this review 99% done before I finished the book proper. But when I hit the Afterword, the author reveals that Nekropolis was originally a shorter novel that sat unpublished since 1995...a novel based wholly on a homegrown tabletop roleplaying campaign.
Boy, howdy. That explains everything.
So a novel about a zombie gumshoe in a world chock full o' monsters? That should be THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD.
Instead, it's infuriating.
Say, did I mention Richter was a cop? Because he sure does, about a thousand times.
Devona, the comely gal (like there could be any other kind in a book like this) who hires him, is the semi-spectral spawn of Vandal Savage-as-vampire-emperor. Yet for someone who's close to a century old and grew up amidst The Borgias Of Monsterburg, she's gallingly dewy-eyed and unworldly.
As for the setting, the eponymous Nekropolis is a techno-magical, alterno-dimensional mega-city set some 300+ years in the future after The Forces Of Darkness leave earth. Or something, as it's totally unclear when the book's actually happening, or the details behind the supernatural exodus, or why there's so many well-adjusted humans wandering around acting like everything's dandy. The environs are overstuffed with wyckyd-kewl things like gene-spliced lycan-chimeras and hologram-tech'd cyber-vampires and teevees-made-from-eyeballs and carnivorous vehicles and voodoo surgeons and satyr bouncers and tee-hee-hee-aren't-I-clever name-checked characters from other sources—Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man's daughter, DJ Phantom Of The Paradise, The Frankenstein Monster—because why the fuck not? The world-building aspects are straight-up disorienting and off-putting as there's just so much stuff.
Nekropolis is a cartoon.
A shitty one, at that.
 |
| Case in point.... Sigh. I'm going to have to review this, too, aren't I? |
—
The plot is as skeletal as the skull-faced bartender (named Skully, because of course he is) introduced on Page 1.
Zombie Non-P.I. needs money to pay his reanimating-mojo bills because, in the of hoariest of cop-related cliches, dude is literally two days from expirement. (I came up with that myself. Don't believe for a second that author was being clever and tweaking genre tropes.)
Dizzy dame shows up needing help finding The McGuffin.
So Thing 1 and Thing 2 wander from A to B to C, sightseeing Hellraiser-y landmarks and meeting weirdos with obnoxiously lazy pun-names (like Ichorus, a winged vampire. Ugh).
Said weirdos create conflict. Leaden banter ensues. Gadget pulled from trenchcoat. Conflict ends. Repeat ad nauseum.
During the lulls between non-fights, there's pathos-dripping ACTING! that'd make The Master Thespian know shame.
 |
| "I'm...I'm not saying that." |
Romance happens between Richter and Devona, because of course it does, but it's hollow and groan-inducing. They share a mind-bond, you see, so that totally explains how they fall madly, deeply in love after only knowing each other one whole day.
Pages start to run out, so The McGuffin appears in the hands of The Villain. But it's a big non-climax, as our hero actually re-dies paving the way for the diabolus ex machina to handle things. Yep, Big-Willy of Nekropolis smites The Villain after the latter obligingly monologues...but it literally happens in the dark, so neither narrator nor reader know what goes down.
Maddening.
At least the eye-rolling tragic backstory involving Richter's dead African-American partner ends quickly enough, with nary a mention of him being too old for this shit.
There are over a dozen glaring grammatical errors: missing words, misspellings, sentence fragments, and misused punctuation. Clunky structures abound.
The zombie-thing is also a non-starter. Richter doesn't hunger for flesh or brains, or serve as the Haitian-slave of some occult practitioner. Nope, he's just dead (from a comic-booky accident), with the only real inconveniences being a lack of smell and taste, an unpleasant scent, and the occasional lost finger or ear (that gets reattached, of course). Why bother?
Oh, yeah. The very first wink-and-a-nod throwaway cameo? It's by a genre icon that's near and dear to my heart...and it fails miserably.
 |
| Carl Is Not Amused |
So, are there any redeeming factors?
I dig the cover. Wish it was on better contents.
One of the aforementioned weirdos—a randy, drug-dealing stick-bug named Morfran—was cool.
I guess some of the flesh-tech inventions are okay, like those Mind's Eye ocular sets that project directly into your brain, and jukeboxes that broadcast via singing heads. But the scabby computers that get real viruses and cellphones with jabbering mouths are ripped straight from Cronenberg. Been done, man.
And with the preponderance of trying-too-hard names, some gems slip through. Like, the country hoedown vampire bar named Westerna's made me grin...but in typing it out, I realize that it should be Westenra's. Sunnuvabitch. Waggoner can't even get his own lousy joke right.
Fuck this book.
—
Most Authentic, Hard-Hitting, Gritty, Noir Godsdamned Embarrassing—For The Author, The Character, AND The Reader—Narration I've Read In Years: "The crowd obligingly parted from him as he clip-clopped away on his goat hooves, bawling like a baby, which I decided was only appropriate considering he had an infant-sized wee-wee."
Most Supposed-To-Be-Serious, Emotive, Non-Ironic Lines Uttered By The Female Lead That Are Worthy Of The Utmost Mockery And Contempt: "If you don't feel anything, perhaps it doesn't have anything to do with your being a zombie. Perhaps that's who Matthew Richter really is—a man who was dead inside long before he died on the outside."
Seriously, fuck this book.
Most Supposed-To-Be-Serious, Emotive, Non-Ironic Lines Uttered By The Female Lead That Are Worthy Of The Utmost Mockery And Contempt: "If you don't feel anything, perhaps it doesn't have anything to do with your being a zombie. Perhaps that's who Matthew Richter really is—a man who was dead inside long before he died on the outside."
Seriously, fuck this book.
—
RPG Relevance: What in Nekropolis isn't relevant to RPGs? Christ, it's already Shadowrun and Rifts and Dark Conspiracy and Nightlife and The World Of Synnibarr and and and....
Which means there's copious material to add to your Planet Motherfucker campaign...but to make it work, you gotta tone it down with a vengeance.
Let that sink in.
—Which means there's copious material to add to your Planet Motherfucker campaign...but to make it work, you gotta tone it down with a vengeance.
Let that sink in.
I had this review 99% done before I finished the book proper. But when I hit the Afterword, the author reveals that Nekropolis was originally a shorter novel that sat unpublished since 1995...a novel based wholly on a homegrown tabletop roleplaying campaign.
Boy, howdy. That explains everything.
Final Review Score: 1.5 Nightbanes out of 5.
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