Tuesday 22 March 2011

Breaking News: an Autozombiography



Good day to you my fellow whipper-snapper-blog-tastic-upstart types... Mr. Nova here, coming to you via the alter ego of Lord Felpbey Cressingheart III...(please employ your very best upper-crust English accents forthwith)... 


It was not so very long ago that my good friend and fellow pigeon fancier, Jonny T. asked me to read and review a new collection of words going by the title of Breaking News: an Autozombiography. What seemed at first to be a most arduous and foreboding challenge, instead was one that brought boundless entertainment and great amusement. So it is therefore with the utmost pleasure, that I report back here with my findings.


Picture, if you will, the scene... It was a crisp Sunday morning  and one was out on the croquet lawn enjoying the swift thwack of ash on oak (and a bit of crumpet) when, all of a sudden, one’s gardener had the temerity to disgorge a vast amount of black bile from his talking box all over the 5th hoop. Much reviled by this scene of vulgarity, I berated the man in the sternest of manners, but to no avail... the damn fool simply stood there, struck dumb with a somewhat confused expression on his withered face. Entirely perturbed by this turn of events, I retired to the library in search of some solace. Reclining into my favorite chesterfield, I cracked open a sherry and thought this the perfect time to embark upon my latest reading adventure.


Imagine my surprise upon finding that it is under these exact circumstances (minus the croquet, crumpet and gardener) that we enter the engrossing world of N. J. Hallard’s Breaking News. For it is with a neighbour behaving in much the same manner as my horticulturist, that Mr. Hallard has his first close encounter of the Zombie kind. Excited and with much intrigue, I read on.


Within the tome’s fresh and silky pages, we follow the exploits of NJ, his wife Lou and fellow laggard Al, as they battle across the increasingly zombie infested county of West Sussex. Finding themselves immersed in a world where all around them is rapidly decaying, they devise ever more ingenious methods of surviving the ensuing zombiepocalypse. And zombiepocalypse is no overstatement, for there is enough undead flesh in this action packed escapade to sate even the most ravenous of zombie connoisseurs.


Respectfully doffing it’s cap to several classic zombie movies along the way, Breaking News is full to its blood encrusted brim with comedy and gore in equal measure. The reader is treated to several inventive death scenes, including one in which a foul beast is dispatched with that most deadly of weapons, an umbrella! But halt...  let me not further divulge the delights to be found within these covers, for that is a pleasure that should be left to the eager minds and hungry eyes of those that are wise enough to explore further.


And so, in conclusion friends, let me say this; hamble-thwack-norton! Yes... for that is what those of us in the know shout when we happen upon something that stirs the soul and stimulates the senses... Join with me my compadres as I raise my sherry, tug my forelock, roll up my trouser and thank Mr. Hallard, most thoroughly, for bringing us a work of such visceral excitement and delectation.


I wholeheartedly suggest that you visit Mr. Hallard at his t’interweb domicile, whereupon I urge you to make purchase of said work. For those among you who prefer their books with batteries, a down-loadable version is available here.


“And what of the gardener?” I hear you enquire... ah yes, poor fellow... taking my lead from the marvelous Mr. Hallard, I lopped his head clean off with a swift blow from my croquet mallet... death to the stinkers eh N.J. old boy... death to the stinkers!


Until we meat again dear friends, I remain your ever humble servant... Lord Felpbey.

3 comments:

  1. Brilliant. must find and read.

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  2. praise the lord felpby!
    It is a great book.

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  3. Nick is a great guy and this is one of the best zombie novels I've read. I wish someone would buy the movie rights for this movie, it can't be praised enough.

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