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Nekropolis (Matt Richter #1)

by Tim Waggoner (Goodreads Author)

3.72 of 5 stars 3.72 · rating details · 618 ratings · 85 reviews

MATT RICHTER MAY BE DEAD, BUT HE'LL STILL CRACK THIS CASE.

Meet Matt Richter. Private Eye. Zombie. His mean streets are the city of the dead, the shadowy realm known as Nekropolis.

This place has always been ruled by the vampire overlords.
Now they're plotting to destroy the city.
... overhis dead body.

More pulp than Pulp Fiction, more butt-kicking than Buffy, Nekropolis is...more

Paperback, 401 pages

Published September 28th 2010 by Angry Robot (first published April 15th 2004)

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Mar 18, 2012 Ami rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: urban-fantasy-with-male-protagonist

The first Matt Richter's -- zombie private investigator at Nekropolis, an otherworldly city, populated with the Darkfolks -- is quite enjoyable. Matt is the only zombie without a master, he's was a cop back on Earth, when he was alive. Nowadays, in Nekropolis, he does favors from time to time. When Davona Kanti, a half-Bloodborn's daughter of Lord Glam (one of the five Lords that rule five regions of Nekropolis) asks for his help to get back a missing Collection, called the Dawnstone, Matt figur...more

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Feb 10, 2013 BluestockingBabe rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: urb-fan-para-rom

I REALLY enjoyed this book. It was very well thought out and written with a wonderfully wicked humour. My only complaint might be the romance part (though it was kept to a minimum), but I understand that it assisted the plot line and having it in there would appeal to "normal" females who (like I used to before I learned there were other options in life besides being in a relationship) live for romantic stories. I think the book would have been amazing even without it. Secondly, not that it affe...more

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Sep 30, 2012 Book Chick City rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: urban-fantasy, book-list-2010

I have wanted to read this book since August last year when I bought it because of the awesome cover. But as we all know, we shouldn't judge a book by its cover (although we all do) but we hope that the story is as good as it's visual counterpart. Unfortunately this wasn't the case with Nekropolis.

I'm so disappointed to say that Nekropolis didn't live up to it's awesome cover or premise. I expected a hard-boiled detective with an intriguing mystery to solve. Instead It was a very light, very lon...more I have wanted to read this book since August last year when I bought it because of the awesome cover. But as we all know, we shouldn't judge a book by its cover (although we all do) but we hope that the story is as good as it's visual counterpart. Unfortunately this wasn't the case with Nekropolis.

I'm so disappointed to say that Nekropolis didn't live up to it's awesome cover or premise. I expected a hard-boiled detective with an intriguing mystery to solve. Instead It was a very light, very long read. Too light for the urban fantasy I enjoy reading and just too long to keep me consistently engaged. It took me fifteen days to finish. The writing is good enough and flows well, and it's very easy reading, but sadly it just didn't contain enough edge for me.

The main character, Matt Ritcher, is a self-willed zombie private eye who lives in Nekropolis, a city on a planet far away from Earth, which can only be accessed by an enchanted mirror. I was expecting him to be dark and tortured (he is a zombie after all), instead I got the most nicest zombie ever written.

Ritcher is just too nice! He doesn't swear, he's very polite and he never loses his rag - I'm not saying that there has to be lots of profanity or violence in my books because that's not the case at all, but I do like my protagonists in urban fantasy to have some grit, a back story that I want to delve into to find out more about that character. I want them to have charisma. With Ritcher there was nothing, other than he used to be a cop and used to be married. Maybe I just like my boys bad.

Devona, Ritcher's half-human, half-vampire sidekick/love interest wasn't really that much better. She was either cowering behind Ritcher like a weakling or ripping the throat out of a humungous beast. This woman didn't know whether she was kick-arse or totally pathetic. I didn't warm to her at all and the relationship between the two wasn't electric enough. It was all rather bland.

In their quest to find who stole the Dawnstone there was a lot of running from one person to ask a few questions before running on to the next, but there wasn't really any action. There were too many characters to contend with to get a sense of who they were and I was saturated by too many descriptions of weird and wacky creatures that inhabited Nekropolis.

The creatures were fun to a point but I felt they were just thrown together to create a world different from Earth but without too much effort: 'Chiranha', a hybrid of the dog breed chihuahua and piranha fish and 'Patchwork', a man made out of cloth with buttons for eyes (??) and although they were certainly wacky combinations they weren't really out-of-this world in terms of imagination.

Verdict:

I am so disappointed as I only wanted positive reviews for my 'Men of Urban Fantasy' week, but unfortunately this book just didn't work for me. I honestly thought I would love it: urban fantasy, zombies, a mystery to solve, vampires - it sounded just like my kind of read, but I didn't connect with the characters or their story.(less)

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Aug 14, 2012 Nick McGreggor rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: urban-fantasy

I liked this. I really did. And yet there were a few flaws that pulled me out of the story at times.

Wildly inventive. Tons of fun.

Sometimes Richter irritated me though, because he wasn't ruthless, and the author presents the Nekropolis as ruthless and dangerous. People being run down by cabs. Restaurants that sell pieces of humans. People being killed during the wild celebration. It's all tongue-in-cheek, but when the hero--who is clever rather than powerful--is faced with a lyke who wants to r...more

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Jul 14, 2012 Alex Klimkewicz rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, horror

As much as I hated my mockery of a life, it was the only mockery I had, and I didn't particularly want to lose it. (p. 29)

Matt Richter is a private detective in the vein of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. He's sardonic. He doesn't pull punches, or one-liners. Also, he is a zombie living (or existing) in an other-worldly city filled with vampires, werewolves, and other monsters. Given that set up and the mesh of hard-boiled detective with a fantasy horror backdrop, I should have liked this more tha...more

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Mar 06, 2012 Anna rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror

Nekropolis is full of interesting critters. Since the metropolis is full of the darker supernaturals, everything from vampires to weres to giant bugs live here, as well as some rather grotesque things you've never heard of but are given vivid description. Matt's world and its occupants are brought to life in loving detail, and there's always something new to look at (so to speak).

This is also one of the novel's flaws. There's so much going on, so many critters and places squashed into the pages,...more Nekropolis is full of interesting critters. Since the metropolis is full of the darker supernaturals, everything from vampires to weres to giant bugs live here, as well as some rather grotesque things you've never heard of but are given vivid description. Matt's world and its occupants are brought to life in loving detail, and there's always something new to look at (so to speak).

This is also one of the novel's flaws. There's so much going on, so many critters and places squashed into the pages, the whole thing feels a little frenetic. Rather than the mystery building up naturally, it feels like an excuse to visit as many weird and imaginative things as possible before racing to the next thing.

For all the creativity in the novel, it's sad this doesn't expand to the characters, who wind up more as caricatures. There's no depth to any of them, not even the ones whose names are stamped on every page. In fact, Devona has no personality at all; she is formed by the plot and reacts as necessary to move the story along or to show off Matt a little better. The villains are prone to long speeches ("And now, Mr Bond, I will tell you exactly how I managed to win, and--hey! You managed to foil me while I was distracted with my gloating! Bad form!"),

Nekropolis wants so badly to be a hard-boiled detective novel (with zombies), but for a noir private eye, Matt does a whole lot of angsting. He also can't decide how he wants to tell the story, and so there are a number of slips between present and future storytelling, where sometimes the story is being told from Matt's head as it unfolds, and sometimes he seems to be recalling it after the fact with the insight of hindsight. The two don't mesh particularly well.

I'd also like to point out the sappiness of the forced love interest and the irony therein. Although Devona is introduced at the very beginning of the story and is essentially glued to Matt's side until the end, there isn't a lot of chemistry between them. It's all told to us rather than shown, and told in often awkward terms:

"A few hours ago, I was joined to Matt soul-to-soul," Devona said. "I experienced his thoughts, his emotions . . . and his memories. I know what you did to his partner, and more, I know what that loss did to him. You should've died the day the Overmind was destroyed, you bastard. But you didn't and so I'm glad to finish the job. For Matt." She paused. "For my love."
I was so overwhelmed by what Devona had done—and even more by what she'd just said—that for a moment all I could do was sit there gaping like an undead moron.

Hmm. Interesting, then, that considering this awkward romance is shoehorned into the story, we have this nasty swipe coming in out of nowhere only a few pages later:

The elevator flided to a stop and the door opened to reveal a boudoir of silks, satins, and a thousand overstuffed pillows scattered everywhere. Every possible shade of red and pink was represented, and I later learned from Devona that the air was thick with the mingled scents of a dozen different cloying perfumes mingled with a truckload of potpourri. The whole place was like a romance writer's wet dream.

A romance writer's wet dream? Really? Really? Did you notice you're not only writing a romance, but a ZOMBIE romance?

Ok, these issues aside, it can be a fun read if you're just looking to sit back and relax. There are a lot of creative trappings to the book, so if you're in the mood for something dark and bizarre that you don't have to take seriously, this might be what you're looking for.(less)

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Sep 16, 2011 Genevieve rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The world that Tim Waggoner created is rich and fascinating. It reminded me in many ways of RPG-based fiction, where the world and "NPCs" are as much the main character as the hero or heroine (I wasn't surprised to read in the books "Afterward" that he had originally used the world in a role-playing game with friends). The plot seemed designed specifically to take us past as many sites and to introduce us to as many characters as possible, which was great for learning more about the world, but f...more

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Jul 01, 2011 Dave rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Maybe it's because as a kid I spent my Saturday nights watching Stacy Keach play Mike Hammer on CBS, but I love private detectives. They're my favorite form of literary heroes. They dish out and endure all sorts of punishment in their quest for the truth. The cover for Tim Waggoner's novel "Nekropolis" hinted that readers would meet a private eye capable of enduring a lot of punishment. That's because he was a zombie, but unlike your typical zombie he had his full cognitive capablities and didn'...more

Maybe it's because as a kid I spent my Saturday nights watching Stacy Keach play Mike Hammer on CBS, but I love private detectives. They're my favorite form of literary heroes. They dish out and endure all sorts of punishment in their quest for the truth. The cover for Tim Waggoner's novel "Nekropolis" hinted that readers would meet a private eye capable of enduring a lot of punishment. That's because he was a zombie, but unlike your typical zombie he had his full cognitive capablities and didn't possess a craving for brains.

Waggoner's protagonist is a fairly likeable guy named Matt Richter, a former cop from Cleveland. One night Matt and his partner followed a strange killer through a mysterious portal and became trapped in the other dimensional city of Nekropolis. In their final confrontation with the killer, Matt's partner was murdered and accident happened that transformed him into an intelligent zombie. He decided to use his skills to become a sort of unofficial P.I. Instead of doing jobs. He does "favors" His cunning mind, undead physical form, and the numerous mystical tools he keeps in the pockets of his trench coat make him pretty good at his job. Matt's first two traits are quite interesting. The second one though just felt a little too convenient and super hero like. Matt's trenchcoat is pretty much just like Batman's utility belt.

Matt's abilities and tools help him with his job, but what really makes him an interesting character is his genuine desire to do good. In spite of all he's seen in the monstrous city of "Nekropolis" he's not a cynical character. He doesn't believe what he's doing is futile and continues to try regardless of the odds. That makes him a refreshing and interesting character. He broods a little bit, but doesn't really wine or complain.

In "Nekropolis" Matt is approached by Devona, the daughter of the city's vampire overlord. She needs him to do the favor of finding a stolen mystical artifact before her temperamental father finds out. Matt takes the case and he Devona's investigation takes them across the entire city of Nekropolis, which is a pretty interesting town.

Imagine one city that's a combination of the different horror theme realms of Ravenloft from "Dungeons and Dragons," Halloweentown from the "Nightmare Before Christmas," and the crazy afterlife of "Beetlejuice." That's Nekropolis. It's populated by horrific technology that's a mirror reflection of our own. It is also home to monsters, demons, magicians, and all around strange characters. The city itself is broken down into boroughs each controlled by a particularly powerful dark lord. For example, a shapeshifting darklord rules over a borough populated by were beasts, and a vampirc dark lord rules a neighborhood of blood suckers. These dark lords commit all sorts of intrigues against each other, but every year the must cooperate in a ceremony that keeps the city from being destroyed.

So the setting of "Nekropolis" was pretty damn interesting, but for some reason the book just didn't click with me. I don't know if the setting was too weird or alien, the pacing was off or if the book just wasn't what I wanted it to be. There were times when I felt my patience and attention wearing thin.

I stuck with "Nekropolis" though and I'm glad I did. By the end of the book Waggoner ultimately won me back over. What did it were his two main characters of Matt and Devona. In many thrillers with a male and female character they often fall in love and fall in bed together. It's usually a very contrived plot development. In "Nekropolis" Matt and Devona do develop feelings for each other, but in a unique and organic way. I bought it. It felt sweet and true, and it kept me reading.

So I found "Nekropolis" to be a bumpy, but ultimately satisfying journey. It had a solid and likeable main character who developed a relationship with another character that felt interesting, poignant, and very real. So because of that I'm definitely interested in seeing what Waggoner does with his second Matt Richter novel, "Dead Streets." (less)

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Aug 31, 2009 Barbara Martin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: urban-fantasy

Nekropolis is a hard boiled crime mystery set in an urban fantasy landscape within a shadowy dimension different than Earth. Matthew Richter, a cop from Cleveland, followed a murder suspect through a two-way portal into Nekropolis. There he ends up as a zombie working at the only business he knows: as a private eye.

Considered a rare entity as a self-willed zombie, Richter does favours for the creature citizens of Nekropolis in exchange for fees to purchase restorative spells. Every day is focus...more

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Jan 03, 2011 Michelle rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Nekropolis is the first book in the Matt Richter series by Tim Waggoner and an Urban Fantasy from Angry Robot.

Book Blurb:

MATT RICHTER MAY BE DEAD, BUT HE'LL STILL CRACK THIS CASE.

Meet Matt Richter. Private Eye. Zombie. His mean streets are the city of the dead, the shadowy realm known as Nekropolis.

This place has always been ruled by the vampire overlords.

Now they're plotting to destroy the city.
... over his dead body.

My thoughts:

I loved this book!

Matt Richter was a cop for Cleveland PD for twen...more

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Jun 28, 2009 Roswita rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: zombies, vampires, shifters, alternate-world

Matthew Richter was a cop in life. Now, as a zombie living in the alternate reality that is Nekropolis, he's a private investigator, though he claims he only an ex-cop who "sometimes does favours for peoplefor a fee." This story is best summed up by Matthew himself. It's about "a half-human vampire who's asked a zombie ex-cop to help (her) track down a magic crystal."

This was a very enjoyable mysterywith vampires, zombies, and shiftersset in a noir kind of town. Setting aside that he's a zomb...more

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Oct 03, 2011 Noor Jahangir rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crossover, fantasy, horror

Nekroplis is a strange concoction of genres. Its a detective story set in a fantasy background with every describable (and some indescribable)monster from horror featured in it. Its perhaps why it took Nekroplis so long to be taken up by a mainstream publisher. It challenges the norms and the comfort-zones of strictly defined genres. The author suggests that he was way ahead of the times when he wrote this, over a decade ago, with an ex-cop zombie as the main character and his love interest a ha...more Nekroplis is a strange concoction of genres. Its a detective story set in a fantasy background with every describable (and some indescribable)monster from horror featured in it. Its perhaps why it took Nekroplis so long to be taken up by a mainstream publisher. It challenges the norms and the comfort-zones of strictly defined genres. The author suggests that he was way ahead of the times when he wrote this, over a decade ago, with an ex-cop zombie as the main character and his love interest a half-vampire.
But the ex-cop zombie and his half-dead girlfriend aren't the stars of this book. Its not even the noir detective plot. This book is all about the world-building. The book takes the reader on the trip through all the different boroughs of Nekroplis, bringing the protagonist into contact with every single one of the Darklords that rule over the city. But it makes sense, because the author developed the world as a role-playing setting for his friends.
Basically, Nekroplis was built by Lord Dis, with the aid of the Darklords as a refuge from persecution on Earth, like Genosha is in the X-men universe. Each Darklord then was given a borough of Nekroplis to rule, each connected by a bridge to a central island that is the home of Lord Dis. The city is powered and held together by a false sun known as Umbriel, which needs to be renewed every year in a ceremony, for which all the Darklords conserve their power and then channel it through Lord Dis, who renews Umbriel. Accept this year, someone is trying to derail the ceremony. That's were Matt Richter comes in.
Tim Waggoner is a seasoned author and handles the various twists and turns of the plot well. His writing is tight and every bit up to describing all the weird and wonderful things about Nekroplis. The lead characters could have been any detective and damsel in distress if it weren't for their peculiar situation, zombie and half-vampire, and of course their postcode, so I didn't really feel all that close to them. The plot at times felt convoluted, a vehicle to show us the different parts of the city, but didn't detract too much from the reading experience.
I'm not sure I will visit the world of Nekroplis again, but I definitely think this is a book reading at least once. (less)

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Apr 28, 2011 Robert Stadnik rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Within the first two chapters I couldn't help but feel I had already read this story and was familiar with the characters. This novel seemed, component to component, exactly like the stories of the Nightside series written by Simon Greene. The main character, Matt Richter, seemed to parallel Greene's John Taylor. Both were private investigators and both used little tricks to get out of bad situations. Richter's love interest, Devona, seemed to be a parallel to Taylor's girlfriend, Shotgun Suzie....more

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Apr 17, 2011 Brittany Beavers rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really love this book and its super hard trying to contain myself while reviewing because I do not want to spoil it for anyone! I'll give it my best shot. To begin the concept of a self willed zombie who talks and isnt screaming the words "BRAINS" and running at alive humans with their mouth wide open is not one I can say is used alot. He is pretty much like a live human being except his skin is greyish, he can fall apart, and oh ya his organs dont work. He still has emotions though and a mind...more

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Jul 25, 2011 Yvensong rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: zombies, vampire, mysteries-and-thrillers, library, fantasy-dark, horror

3 1/2 stars

Pulp, hard-boiled detective, horror genre wrapped up in one, not-always-so-neatly written yet entertaining novel.

This has the flavor of many of the older pulp novels put out in the 1950's which featured a hard-boiled detective getting mixed up with a femme fatale who would drag him to hell and back before the case is solved. These novels tended to have some awkward writing, as did this one, (maybe done on purpose in this case?). The characters in this novel were likable in spite of a...more

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Jan 13, 2011 Coaxial Creature rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Nekropolis, by Tim Waggoner, may make him one of my new favorite authors. I don't normally like zombies, but I've been thinking of them as mindless, brain eating monsters - and I've been finding a lot of fiction that makes them flesh-eating, true, but not quite as mindless.

Nekropolis is one of those. It takes zombies, and other types of dead, and witches and warlocks, and zombies, and shapeshifters and creates a unique mythology that brings them from Earth to the city of Nekropolis, a city creat...more Nekropolis, by Tim Waggoner, may make him one of my new favorite authors. I don't normally like zombies, but I've been thinking of them as mindless, brain eating monsters - and I've been finding a lot of fiction that makes them flesh-eating, true, but not quite as mindless.

Nekropolis is one of those. It takes zombies, and other types of dead, and witches and warlocks, and zombies, and shapeshifters and creates a unique mythology that brings them from Earth to the city of Nekropolis, a city created by Father Dis, and kept alive through the energy his five Darklords each year during the Descencion.

The characters sparkle, especially the main character, Matt Richter. If I hadn't cared about him, I wouldn't have been able to finish the novel, but I found myself caring that the preservative spells weren't working, and wondering how he would keep himself alive to solve his last mystery (he does favors for those in Nekropolis.) The world is kept alive through details, like the use of Bloody Mary - although she pops in briefly - or the cabs, or the mix of science and technology and magic.

I like how Earth is mentioned, described, and may be a part of future books in the Nekropolis series, but isn't the focus of even the first novel. Matt Richter is from Earth originally, and the woman who suckers him into helping him is a human/vampire hybrid - which usually annoys me as it seems impossible, but the world was so enchanting, and the caste system among vampires seemed thought out and fleshed out enough that the hybridization made sense in that it was there for a reason.

I didn't get the whole Devona/Richter relationship, but I'm hoping that's explored further in the next novel as it has the potential to grow on me, I think. But other than that, I got kind of annoyed that everyone and his mother owed Richter. I get it. He's unique, and the favors he does for everyone are super fantastic. But that also implied that he had talents, could think on his feet, and had the ability to preform these amazing feats - otherwise I don't think everyone would be as indebted to him as they are. And yeah, you get to see that sometimes, but I'm hoping the favors aren't something that are relied upon all the time because it makes me roll my eyes, particularly since at the end of the novel and stripped of even his physical body, you get to see that Matt really do the seemingly impossible. In the second novel, I'd like to see him rely more on himself and less on the favors of others.

Still, I absolutely recommend this book. I've already tracked down the authors other books, and I plan on getting a couple for my Kindle, and reading them, soon.(less)

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Jan 13, 2011 Mark Nunn rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

was a little surprised to see that readerson WeRead had only given this book 2 stars, not because it's a wonderful piece of literature ( I don't think you'd see this on the shortlist for the man booker prize) but because by reading the back it's very easy to tell if it's the kind of book you'd enjoy.

File Under:
*Zombie Detective
*Undead City
*Crime Overlord
*Sexy Vampires

If you read this and don't enjoy it you don't really have anyone to blame but yourself.

On GoodReads it's got a higher rating so o...more

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Jan 11, 2013 Neha rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy

Nekropolis is basically about a detective who also happens to be a zombie. When I first saw this book, the concept of it all rather intrigued me.

Overall the plot was good and engaging. I liked reading about his zombie state and the many things he does to keep himself mobile. The fantasy elements are engaging as well. It is a nicely written piece of fiction. My only real issue with this novel is that it feels like an immitation of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. There were many times while r...more

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Nov 30, 2011 Eclectic Reader rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, humor

Nekropolis is about zombie private eye Matt Richter. It took exactly 54 pages for this book to come alive (pun intended). After that, I devoured it, enjoying the assorted weird characters, fast-paced plot, and tug-at-your-heartstrings romance. It's very rare that I do not want a book to end (normally by the last 75 pages, I'm begging most books to end), but this was a world I did not want to leave. I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

However, I do want to throw out one caution: eit...more

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Feb 01, 2011 Rea rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, humour, urban-fantasy

This truly is an original story. It was very well executed with the dark humour and the horror mingling perfectly. I have only two gripes with the story:

1. It needed better editing. In some places there are often sentences where a word is missing or it is repeated twice and there are some fairly obvious spelling errors. Example: something is named the 'Plain' and a few lines later it is referred to as the 'Plan'.

2. Too much exposition from the antagonists. Some of them, the ones that are clearly...more

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May 30, 2011 Lilli Perspice rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, urban-fantasy, they-live-in-my-house

My daughter actually picked this book up on a whim, something I never do. I like my books thoroughly vetted before I even think about handing over one grubby little dime for them. Since she has a more ADHD approach to her book choosing, my expectations were pretty low to begin with. However, the idea of a zombie P.I. in a city full of monsters was enough for me to give it a shot.

The mystery of a missing magical artifact was interesting enough to keep me turning pages. However, the extremely high...more My daughter actually picked this book up on a whim, something I never do. I like my books thoroughly vetted before I even think about handing over one grubby little dime for them. Since she has a more ADHD approach to her book choosing, my expectations were pretty low to begin with. However, the idea of a zombie P.I. in a city full of monsters was enough for me to give it a shot.

The mystery of a missing magical artifact was interesting enough to keep me turning pages. However, the extremely high number of typos and other editing issues such as doubled words and misspelled character names kept me from enjoying this book to the fullest. For just one example, lines like "I took his head in my heads..." (I'm assuming that is supposed to be hands given the context of the story) really jarred me out of the story. In another section, a slaughtered lamb mysteriously turns into a slaughtered goat a few pages later. Five or ten editing issues a book I can completely forgive. However, when you are looking at between thirty and forty, I start to get peeved since every one of those represents a place where I was unceremoniously booted out of the story as I tried to decipher what it should say. Of course, the story can still be enjoyed despite these issues, but for me it lessens the experience.

My last complaint is the way the eventual love connection evolves. The relationship between the main character and his client was moving along nicely, despite the events of the story happening over just one night. I was annoyed at how the instalove was explained though and thought the story would have been better served had the relationship been allowed to develop along more "normal" lines (yes, I know it's fantasy, but you can still have human-ish connections that we can relate to happening in a fantasy story).

The city of Nekropolis itself was probably my favorite part of the book, its denizens being more quirky and strange than scary. I wanted to know more about the city and inhabitants than I did about the contrived love story aspect. However, I do not think I liked Nekropolis enough to invest in the next book unless I checked it out from the library.

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Jul 25, 2011 Cat Russell (Addicted2Heroines) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Are you going to be all right?"

"Of course. I'm a zombie; I don't have any feelings, remember?"

"Right. I forgot."

I knew Varvara didn't believe it, and for the first time in a long time, neither did I.

Welcome to Waggoner's world, where you can step through a portal and enter a dimension known as Nekropolis, home to all things strange and unusual.

It's a world covered in perpetual dusk, divided into dominions that are overseen by five Darklords, chosen by the creator of Nekropolis.

Zombie detective...more

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Apr 07, 2010 Hali Sowle rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: dark-fantasy, demon, detective, fantasy, necromancy, supernatural, tim-waggoner

A dark fantasy set in a word that is the antithesis to ours, a world where vampires and demons and all sorts of supernaturals walk the streets and humans are the exception. Matt Richter used to be human, when he came through a portal chasing a being that was killing humans with a touch. A detective, he continued his hunt even though it ended up making him a permanent resident of Nekropolis as a zombie, a very unusual, autonomous zombie, but a zombie none the less. But his detective streak stayed...more

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Jul 26, 2011 Tarl rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: paranormal

I found this book purely by fluke and decided to give it a shot. Despite Waggoner being a creative writing instructor and not understanding the concept of a run on sentence, (which he does a LOT, just look at the first sentence of the book) it's a good read. His world is rich, complex, and beautiful. I love monsters. I mean LOVE monsters. And this world has a LOT of them, and they are well thought out and described with just the right amount of detail. The love story is a bit weak though, with t...more

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Oct 16, 2010 Jeremy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Going to post my review from my column "Reading Realms" on The Outhouse website:

http://www.theouthousers.com/index.ph...

When picking this up to read I thought perhaps the title was more a slang reference to whatever city it was going to be set in. Actually it is the name of the city itself, the story taking place in an alternate dimension where all the monsters of our nightmares have retreated to from Earth. To me is was a "con" at first (probably simply because of my incorrect assumption), but...more Going to post my review from my column "Reading Realms" on The Outhouse website:

http://www.theouthousers.com/index.ph...

When picking this up to read I thought perhaps the title was more a slang reference to whatever city it was going to be set in. Actually it is the name of the city itself, the story taking place in an alternate dimension where all the monsters of our nightmares have retreated to from Earth. To me is was a "con" at first (probably simply because of my incorrect assumption), but as I got used to Nekropolis and it felt more familiar to me that change. By the end of the book Waggoner had turned it into a "pro" for me.

Nekropolis follows former police detective (from earth) turned zombie, Matt Richter. As much as I love zombie stories, I've shied away from some of the stories where writers have tried to turn zombies into intelligent characters. Truth be told, I thought Tim Waggoner handled this perfectly. He showed different types of zombies that exist and how even in Nekropolis, Matt was a unique specimen. Where something like this would not work in a typical American city, having the story set off of Earth made him fit right in (as much as possible) with all the other monsters.

Speaking of monsters, Nekropolis was giving me flash-backs of the show "Ugly Americans", with less americans however. Strange and powerful monsters make up the majority of the city's population and definitely show the reader this is not your typical Urban Fantasy with monsters hiding in shadows only to show up here and there.

The plot itself is pretty generic fair, with Matt Richter working with a half vampire/half human woman to recover a powerful artifact before it is used for nefarious means. Most of the enjoyment in the story comes not so much from the plot, but from getting to know Nekropolis and all it's strange characters including our storyteller Richter. Even in the story resolution where it might not blow your mind with anything shocking, makes Nekropolis a deeper and more interesting place.

Bottom Line:

Nekropolis was an interesting take on two very common story types today: zombies and urban fantasies. Waggoner creates something different than expected and seems to lay the foundation for so much more to take place in Nekropolis.(less)

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May 28, 2011 Rosalind M rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

3.75 stars. As someone else has mentioned, it does indeed remind you of Simon Green's NIGHTSIDE series. Both books take place in a supernatural world of dark nightmares and both are full of intriguing characters who flit through quickly like extras in a movie.

These characters are part of what intrigued me about this book, and I'm hoping that we get to see more of them in books to come. This first ride out was a little convenient at times and tended toward long explanations when the scene actuall...more

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Feb 01, 2011 Lauren Smith rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, ebook, crime-and-mystery, angry-robot, horror, myth-and-mythology, vampires, zombies

The tale is classic detective noir – the beautiful blonde damsel is in distress and needs the help of the smart, hardass detective with personal issues and a repertoire of bad and very bad jokes. But the damsel is a vampire/human halfbreed, the detective is a zombie, and it’s all set in Nekropolis, a city in “a distant dark dimension” where all the evil creatures came to live when they got tired of being hunted and hated by the inhospitable humans of Earth.

Nekropolis is worth exploring and its p...more

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Oct 08, 2010 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“This place has always been ruled by the vampire lords. Now they are plotting to destroy the city. Over my dead body”.

For the second entry in Zombie Appreciation Month we move away from the end of the world toward a detective novel with a twist. I’m sure you can guess the nature of the twist? Nekropolis: The Matt Richter Series, Book I by Tim Waggoner is the first outing for the zombie detective.

Hundreds of years ago, Father Dis and the five lesser Dark Lords brought all of the Darkfolk together...more “This place has always been ruled by the vampire lords. Now they are plotting to destroy the city. Over my dead body”.

For the second entry in Zombie Appreciation Month we move away from the end of the world toward a detective novel with a twist. I’m sure you can guess the nature of the twist? Nekropolis: The Matt Richter Series, Book I by Tim Waggoner is the first outing for the zombie detective.

Hundreds of years ago, Father Dis and the five lesser Dark Lords brought all of the Darkfolk together. To avoid continued persecution by humans they left Earth and travelled to an alternate dimension where Father Dis created Nekropolis. The city is split into five different dominions with one of the lords in charge of each. In Nekropolis you’ll find vampires, lykes (shapeshifters), demons, witches and warlocks, the undead and everything in-between.

Matt Richter is an ex-cop from Cleveland who stumbled into Nekropolis during the course of an investigation. While there he died but has since been reanimated as the city’s only self-willed zombie. Unable to return to Earth due to his undead state, he does favours for people in return for dark gems. He uses the dark gems to pay for the preservative spells he needs to stay in one piece. Unlike a Romero flavoured brain eating zombie, Matt is a creature of voodoo and magic.

I loved the idea that, unlike all the other supernatural denizens of the city, zombies haven’t got very many inherent powers. They are no stronger than when they were human and though they don’t feel pain they can be quite easily damaged. What they do have however, is incredible powers of concentration and patience, which if you are a detective can only be a good thing. Thinking about other zombie novels they do seem to very single minded and determined so this seems like a nice reworking of that aspect of their nature.

The story that unfolds is, at its core, quite simple. A powerful artefact called the Dawnstone has been stolen from Galm, the Lord of the vampires. Matt is hired by Devona, the vampire Lord’s daughter, to return it. Take away the zombies and vampires and it probably does not differ greatly from many other detective novels. Where Nekropolis stands out is that the author has obviously spent a great deal of time creating a fully fleshed out universe.

The city seems very real and vibrant. Some fantastic sounding characters are mentioned in passing. Hopefully we’ll see more of these in the future. The Suicide King, the Jade Enigma, Antwerp the Psychotic Clown, Slitheria the Serpent Goddess. All very evocative sounding and suggesting further mystery that requires investigation.

Nekropolis reminds me in some ways of the the Nightside novels by Simon R Green. Like Nightside, the city of Nekropolis is itself as much a character as anyone else in the novel. There are some great touches. In a place where anything is possible it seems only logical there would be a vampire cowboy bar, a French restaurant run by giant snails and a brothel whose Madam is also a Mister. I can die happy knowing that someone has created a chihuahua/piranha cross – the chiranaha.

Nekropolis has been out in the UK since 2009 so the good news is that there is already a sequel available, Dead Streets: The Matt Richter Series - Book II (Nekropolis 2). Based on how much I enjoyed Nekropolis I’ll be checking it out.

I’m sure that there are zombie purists out there who would dismiss the idea of self willed and highly sentient undead, but if zombie detective fiction sounds like your kind of thing there are some other fine examples.Tomes of the Dead: I, Zombie by Al Ewing and Dead America by Keioskie are also currently available and worthy of your attention.(less)

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Mar 03, 2011 Cissa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If you like Simon Green's "Nightside" books, especially the later ones, you may well like this. It's very much in a similar mode.

In the afterword, the author says he wrote it in a total of 30 days, and that shows; it would have been improved by some re-writing, particularly much of the repetitiveness in the text.

Lots of grotesqueness, some of which is relevant (similar to Nightside). Not much character development. A workmanlike albeit rather cliched plot. A decent world conceptually, but the OM...more

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Jul 28, 2011 Amanda rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, horror

Wow, did I read the same book as these other reviewers? I gave up on this novel halfway through. The concept of Nekropolis is interesting but the novel is dry reading and bloated with world-building details that lose focus on the main story. Not to mention, Devona's naivite is not believable in a world comprised entirely by horror creatures. My copy of the book features a different cover than this one, PI Matt Richter as a zombie in a fedora. I'm guessing they changed spelling of the title in th...more

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About Tim Waggoner

Tim Waggoner has published over thirty novels and three short story collections, and his articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and Writers’ Journal, among others. He teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College and in Seton Hill University’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program. Visit him on the web at www.timwaggoner.com.

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Books by Tim Waggoner

Thieves of Blood (Eberron: The Blade of the Flame, #1)

Temple of the Dragonslayer (Dragonlance: The New Adventures, #1)

Forge of the Mind Slayers (Eberron: The Blade of the Flame, #2)

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Nekropolis (Matt Richter #1)

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