An omnibus of three noir-fantasy fusion novels, The Nekropolis Archives are possibly the worst books I've read all year, on every count.

Matt Richter is a zombie PI in Nekropolis - a kind of underworld Mecca for the creatures of the night. Solving crimes is dangerous in this lawless world, but Richter seems to have an uncanny knack for landing on his undead feet.

These books are terrible. Terrible. The prose is blundering, lackluster and - unconscionably - copied and pasted from one novel to another; the narratives are aimless and riddled with deus ex machina; the characters wafer-thin, apt to change into whatever the stories require; and the world-building haphazard to the point of showing balsa wood.

That these have been published at all is a joke - not too mentioned a starred review from the usually-reliable Publishers Weekly (what were they thinking?). Angry Robot Press has certainly made me think twice regarding any future purchases if this is the kind of dross they'll apply their imprint too.

A quick summary of the issues:

1) Richter has banged out these novels in a hurry and it shows. The prose is careless, repeating when it's not contradicting itself, and to my genuine surprise on first encounter _copied over from one book to the next_. That's right, Waggoner literally copies and paste several hundred words - mostly the interminable explanations for every character, place, and action in all the books. This is compounded by the use of primary-school level puns and lazy names for most of the things in the books. Other bonuses include unwillingness to stick to tenses and confusion between first person and omniscient narrator.

2) This haste is also evident in the plots - the only things that stand out are the armory of Chekhov's guns laying about the place and Waggoner's willingness to wrap everything up at the end however he feels like it. They are both predictable, and largely aimless.

3)The world-building is equally juvenile. Nekropolis as an abstract concept could be a rich and fulfilling world - a spooky equivalent to TunFaire from the Garrett books by Glen Cook. No such luck. The city essentially exists as a series of stages for Waggoner to enact his wan plots with not sense of connection or broader fabric uniting.

I've read some great, cheap books on my Kindle. This is not one of them; it's cheap for a reason. Any writer that is willing to self-plagiarise like that is not worth a skerrick of time - utter disrespect to readers and the profession. You have been warned. ( )

I won this book from the blog http://www.mybookishways.com/ whoohoo!!