Zombies and Ancient Rome - Together at Last

[tbrookside]

I had hesitated to promote this book at Mobilereads because it was only available for the Kindle, and I know not everyone here is on that platform.

But it's now available for the Nook as well! So I wanted to let you folks know about it.

[Sorry, no Smashwords yet. The book contains footnotes / internal links, and the Smashwords upload "meatgrinder" continues to reject it. So I don't have a Sony or Kobo option at this time - but I'm still working on finding one.]

A recovered Latin text tells the story of a struggle between Roman legionaries and the undead in 185 AD.

Lucius Artorius Castus leads an expedition to Gaul to defeat a rebellion against the rule of the Emperor Commodus - and gets more than he bargained for when his enemies rise from the dead to fight again. The power of the zombie horde is amplified by the Babel of Ancient Rome's religions and superstitions, and the terror the undead bring in their wake foreshadows the incipient medieval darkness already creeping into the world at the end of Rome's Antonine age. Richly annotated, this mashup of survival horror and alternate history takes the reader on a bracing journey into one of ancient Rome's dark corners.

The book is structured as a work of nonfiction, with a foreword describing the history of the Latin document and its solecistic title, a "translation" of the text itself, and extensive footnotes. It is a loving homage to the paperback nonfiction products of university presses - a classics text reimagined as a postmodern horror tale.

Special Kindle Edition Bonus: The Kindle version of this title contains an 80 page free preview of Thomas Brookside's new release THE LAST DAYS OF JERICHO.

It's now $2.99 at Barnes and Noble and in the Amazon Kindle Store.

Thanks!

[Dr. Drib]

Dear Author:

Your links are non-working.




Don
(Moderator)

[tbrookside]

Thanks, Dr. Drib!

The links should be working now, everyone. Sorry about that.

[Worldwalker]

This sounds awesome. It would be on my must-read list ... except I don't buy DRM-locked books, and I haven't got either of the readers you support. Other than that, well, I guess it's good for someone. PM me when you've got a DRM-free epub available.

[CaraM]

I love anything about Ancient Rome. I'm putting this one on my list too. I have a Kindle.

[DavidRM]

This does sound cool.

You working on a print version? So I can put it on my shelf next to Zombie Survival Guide???

-David

Edit: Looked on Amazon and answered my own question.

[jaxx6166]

Huh..Looks like World War Z from Ancient Rome. Interesting.

I appreciate your candor and honesty in why you don't have a Smashwords edition. And it makes sense. Feel free to pop into some of our other forums, we've recently discussed the whole meatgrinder situation in the writer's corner.

[tbrookside]

Jaxx6166 -

There may be a Smashwords edition eventually - I've heard that there's a meatgrinder fix coming.

Thanks to everyone who checked out the Pubit! version!

[monkeyluis]

Romans & Zombies = buy with one click. Thanks look forward too it.

[tbrookside]

Thanks Monkeyluis!

[tbrookside]

A reviewer at Amazon writes:

...The framing as a translation of a Roman manuscript is brilliantly done -- from the "cover" to the translator's introduction to the footnotes. The way it allows your imagination to work on what happened in AD 185 before you get to the actual manuscript reminded me of the slow build-up of an H. Rider Haggard novel. The story itself lives up to the frame. It has good suspense and pacing, with real chills. Overall, the author succeeds at the difficult task of writing a horror story that is both entertaining for modern readers and believable (or not wholly unbelievable) as an ancient work. On a few occasions, the spell was briefly broken when the dialogue became too modern. But those moments are rare.

Well done!...

[tbrookside]

An Amazon Top 1000 reviewer writes:

I initially thought this book would be a disaster-- like one of the other reviewers, I studied classical literature and I expected this to be sloppy, but it's very well done, clever, and original.

If you like the zombie genre, you will enjoy this. It's gory at times, as well as historically accurate.

[tbrookside]

An Amazon reviewer writes:

The author pretends to not be the author at all, and poses as the translator and editor of a Latin document that turns up in a German library. The "real" author, Brookside claims, is Lucius Artorius Castus, otherwise known to history as "maybe kinda sorta this guy was the real King Arthur". This is explained in a drily amusing introduction that is played perfectly straight. I liked how the "voice" in the introduction was pretty distinct from the "voice" of the fake ancient document. If you read a lot of history, there's a cadence to documents from antiquity that is pretty effectively employed here. It breaks down in some sections, mainly the ones where the story just requires more dialogue than an ancient text would include, but the overall "spell" works. Since the book is formatted as if it were nonfiction, there are a lot of footnotes in the "editor voice" that add to the historical feeling of the work. A lot of the footnotes seem to be in-jokes about differing interpretations of the history of the period - I got some of them, but don't think I got them all.

Then, of course, there's the zombie story itself to consider, leaving all of the meta stuff aside. And it's a good one. A lot of zombie fiction set in the modern era is repetitive and derivative. But since this story is set in antiquity, everything is different - from how the zombie infestation starts, to how ancient religion and superstition makes the characters react to it, to how zombies have to be fought and killed without guns, etc. It's worth reading just to read the scenes where pagans and Christians scoff at each other's plans for how to deal with the zombies. And the story is set in an obscure part of Roman Gaul where it seems that civilization lies very tenuously on the land, and the atmosphere of darkness and isolation this creates works really well for a story of this kind.

[tbrookside]

Another Amazon reviewer writes:

So, as both a Latin teacher and a lover of zombie novels, I must admit right off the bat two things. One: I bought this simply due to the Latin title. Two: I had expectations for it to be rather horrid due the incorrect grammar of the Latin title.

That out of the way, I was pleasantly surprised to find the book was thoughtfully written, with true horror and true research! The nonsensical title was explained right away in a forward that made a lot of my misgivings go away. L. Artorius Castus' narrative is very compelling, especially the night in the villa. I also really enjoyed the footnote feature, which ranged from explaining obscure terminology for the reader to 'commenting' on the work as if it were a real letter. Very clever and a lot of fun.

This means nothing to people who are not fellow Classicists, but I think the writing seems a bit Apuleian (must be the supernatural aspect of the story) in terms of style. This is a very good thing in this case and lends a certain "authenticity" to the work as being a translation of a Latin work.

[tbrookside]

If it doesn't break the "One book one thread" rule, I'd like to also let you know that the Kindle version of this book includes an 80 page preview of another of my titles, The Last Days of Jericho.

So it's like getting one-and-one-half books for the price of one!