Breathers by S. G. Browne
Publisher: Broadway Books; 2009
Language: English
ISBN: 978-0-7679-3061-1
ISBN-13: 978-0978970772
Rating: 8 out of 10 ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦◊◊
I picked this book up the last day of the spring semester, as a treat to myself for having finished the last of my finals. I started it on the train home, and when I got off the R7 an hour later I was halfway through it. I was done by the next afternoon. It was certainly an easy read, enjoyable and smooth. There was a backstory but only a faint one, and the first-person narration was expressed in a conversational tone, with no big words or big ideas to slow the reader down. I found it interesting that it was told from the perspective of a zombie but that meant it didn’t give me the useful zombie-evasion ideas I prefer my zombie novels to have. It was more of a romantic stroll through a cookbook than it was a survival guide.
Before I get into the meat of the issue, I have to comment on the back of the book. Publishers put quotes, reviews, and comparisons on the back cover of novels like this – first efforts by new authors – to try to convince the buyer that it will be similar, in a good way, to a more familiar work. I understand that with zombie stories, it’s tempting to compare everything to the work of Max Brooks, the most easily recognizable author in the undead genre at the moment. The problem is, very few authors are like Brooks, which is part of why he stands out. Browne’s effort doesn’t deserve the comparison to The Zombie Survival Guide that is prominently noted at the top of the cover. It’s a different animal entirely. The flawed reference implies that the reader is going to get a tongue-in-cheek guidebook to human survival, and instead gets a sad reminder that what is different is mocked and attacked.
This doesn’t mean that Breathers is bad. Not at all. It’s just different than the publishers would like you to think, and deserves a chance to stand on its own. My fear is that if you read the back cover you may not give the book that chance.
Now, for the standard questions …
Did I enjoy it? Yes. It was fun, occasionally funny, easy to get into and didn’t break the rules of the world it created.
Would I read/watch it again? Eventually. I don’t often re-read books until it’s been long enough that I have forgotten the details. This story didn’t leave me feeling there were important bits I might have missed, and it’s not a world I loved so much I’d want to rush back to it, so I don’t know when it’ll get put back on my reading list.
Would I (or did I) purchase it? Yes. I picked it up at the Barnes & Noble across the street from school.
Would I share it with a friend? Yes, if they were looking for a plane-flight book, or something to read on a car ride to the in-laws.
Did it have original ideas? Yes. The book is done as a first-person tale of a zombie’s realization that he could be more than a shambling ghoul. It’s not a slasher story, the blood and gore is kept to a minimum, and it has almost a fifties-guy to feel to it all.
Did I learn something, or say, “Oh, I didn’t think of that before!”? No. It’s not that kind of story.
Did it realistically portray the world it existed in (did it follow its own rules)? Yes. It is set in an alternate earth with a history that seems realistic given what the human reaction to the unknown.
Were the survivors smart and capable? (As opposed to surviving for no reason after they’d done stupid things) Yes, although in this case the survivors were zombies. They made choices at the end that led to capture and death, but that was obviously a choice, not a lack of ability to survive.
Was it well done compared to non-zombie works? (As in, is it a well-written book compared to other books, not just zombie novels?) Yes. It was easy to read, well-edited, and had good continuity, AND the characters do evolve over the story line. It wasn’t too derivative of other works. It was longer than a novella but short enough to hearken back to the good old days when a book didn’t have to be a thousand pages long.
Did it seem long enough? Was there a beginning, middle, and end to the story? Yes. The end didn’t resolve every single issue, and could easily lead into a sequel, but the story that started of the beginning of the book came to a conclusion I couldn’t argue with.
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