GraphicAudio Review: Disarmed and Dangerous (A Nekropolis Short Story) by Tim Waggoner

Genre: Urban Fantasy, Zombies

Series: Short Story from The Matt Richter Series

Publisher: GraphicAudio (May 1, 2014)

Author Information: Website | Twitter

Tiara’s Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars

Narrator: Full Cast | Length: 39 mins

I’m not a huge fan of zombie stories unless there’s some interesting angle to the story such as The Walking Dead or Warm Bodies. Other than that I really, really don’t like zombies. However, aside from the two examples mentioned, there are always more exceptions. This story is an exception.

Since I listened to and enjoyed my first GraphicAudio book, I decided to give some of their non-comics a chance. I went with a short story instead of a full novel, just to get a taste. I don’t know why this caught my attention. Maybe it was the thought of a private investigator who also happens to be an aware zombie as well that was just good enough to catch my interest. Besides, it was short. If I hated it, it wouldn’t take long to get through.

This story starts with Matthew Richter, zombie private investigator facing off with a demon. He pauses in the story to explain how he found himself in that situation. During his flashback, Matt explains the nature of his death and how he became a citizen of Nekropolis. He followed a suspect into a portal, died, and was later raised as a zombie. He also explains briefly how the city works. The city uses human technology as well as magic, but is better suited for biological technological advances being used on their bodies. The supernatural creatures of Nekropolis left earth after unable to live side by side with humans anymore and formed their own magic and technology filled city.

Zombies seem to follow the normal conventions of being shambling shells that fall apart, except without all the “BRAINS?!” mentality. Matt even uses the dumb zombie routine to his advantage at times. Most people in the city ignore them. In some ways, Matt feels worst than his mindless counterparts because he’s aware of all the things he can’t do anymore such as feel pleasure or pain or smell. Body parts being ripped off are just outer body type experiences, getting them sewn back on is much the same. However, thanks to the magic performed on Matt by a voodoo priest, he’s able to most keep himself mostly together. His ability to keep his awareness is never explained in this short. This priest, even if Matt won’t admit it, is his only friend in the city. What I appreciated about this is that voodoo isn’t written off as some big bad in the story. The practice is highly demonized in most stories, when it’s actually not malevolent at its core, and this one does its best not to fall into that trap.

Despite how short this is, it did a wonderful job of giving a taste of Matt’s world and the people he deals with every day. I didn’t feel lost at all while listening to this story, which can rarely happen for a story like this that’s based on a longer work. If anything, it made me more curious to read about Nekropolis and its denizens, and to have me saying that I want to read a zombie book is a very rare thing. The story never felt slow even with the brief history Matt provides the listeners.

Just as with The Death of Captain America, this is voiced by a full ensemble with music and action sequence sound effects. Unlike The Death of Captain America, there were no moments when the sound effects overpowered the dialogue for me and maybe that’s because this was just so short. I hated to hear it end so soon and will definitely be buying the GraphicAudio versions of these full-length novels.

This story takes place before the first book, Necropolis. Some strange things I noticed with reading that book’s description of Necropolis is that some of the names and spellings have changed between the book and this short story such as the spelling of the city, Nekropolis and Matt’s last name is different. The author uses Richter and Nekropolis as the proper spellings on his website, too. Maybe there is some explanation for this minor discrepancy. However, I am still interested in meeting Matt Richter in his fleshed out world.

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