Reviews for Zombie lover

The average rating for Zombie lover based on 2 reviews is 1.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-02-26 00:00:00 Marla Deese I was given this book as part of a "Blind Date with a Book" promotion at the library at the college where I work. If this book had been a real blind date, I'm ashamed to say that in the middle of dinner I excused myself to the restroom then promptly climbed out the window and ran far, far away. I only made it through page 49. When I first unwrapped the book, I was happy to see it was a Piers Anthony novel, as I had enjoyed his Incarnations of Immortality and Bio of a Space Tyrant series when I was in high school. I had some misgivings when I discovered Zombie Lover is book #22 of the Xanth series, a series I had never tried before. My short time with this book gave me the impression that Xanth is an homage to L. Frank Baum's Oz books - a nonsensical fantasy world full of magic and absurd plot twists. I'm not a fan of that sort of fiction. The book's sexism really bugged me too. The 15-year-old heroine is being romantically pursued by a twenty-something zombie who doesn't take no for an answer. One female character alternates between two forms: she's either really smart and ugly or really dumb and pretty. Maybe this makes sense in context of the previous 21 books, but it just comes off as awful here. What finally did me in was the parade of dozens of characters who I'm sure would be familiar and welcome to longtime readers but just left me bored with their labored quirkiness and long expository scenes about plot developments from the previous books.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-12-16 00:00:00 Stephen Benson Xanth is a fantasy novel that is based almost entirely on wordplay, specifically puns. The series occupies a strange space between silly and weird. Anthony has some odd opinions on themes, such as sex, racism, prejudice, growing up, and the use of magic in everyday life. The writing vacillates between heavy-handed condescending to extended analysis of magic, science, and the application of the rules of Xanth. Some love it, some hate it; I personally thought it was a strange read but harmless, although I doubt I'll read each book twice. One thing about Anthony, he has a very complicated history and genealogy of Xanth and its characters and you have to appreciate how he always finds ways to connect them from book to book.