bibliogramma | Ifedayo Adigwe Akintomide: Virus

I decided to read this because I thought it might be interesting to see the perspective of a Nigerian author on the whole zombie novel genre. After all, the zombie we can't get enough of is based on traditions associated with Haitian vodoun, which itself has roots in West African voudon.

The book was a curious mix of abysmally amateurish writing combined with decent characterisation and a fast-paced and at times even exciting story. The prose was awkward and filled with cliches - sighs and groans repeatedly burst from people's lips as they tore in this and that direction, for example. Much of the dialogue was stilted. The editing was non-existent - grammatical and punctuation errors littered the pages, footnotes, often unnecessary, were incorporated into the body of the text.... I could go on, but you probably get the idea. Despite this, the main characters were believable and clearly differentiated, and the plot was tight and interesting.

The differences between this and western versions of the classic zombie horror story were subtle, but there was, to the eyes of this western reader, more of a sense that zombies are the servants of ancient evil embedded in the land - in fact, some of the elements of this African-based zombie tale were reminiscent of the European vampire tradition.

The quality of the writing is such that I can't recommend the novel, but.... If you're a zombie fanatic and also the sort of person who can wade through really bad fanfic because it features your One True Pairing, then you might want to give it a chance.