Thursday, April 28, 2011

News: 'Breathers' Hits Australian Bookshops

One of the major disadvantages of living in Australia - aside from the apocalyptic weather and deadly wildlife - is the fact that relatively little of the great wealth of zomfic published overseas gets picked up by local distributors; or, if it does, it arrives here months (or even years) after its UK or US release. A bit like the First Fleet, in that respect. For every local release of a major title like Feed, Patient Zero or Dead City, there's a dozen equally-laudable titles, like Pontypool Changes Everything or Eden, that simply aren't made available to Aussie readers who still prefer the experience of visiting a physical bookstore*. And that just ain't right. So it's always a cause for celebration when a zombie novel deserving of wider readership finally makes it to our shores.

To whit, today marks the official release of S. G. Browne's Breathers by Hachette Australia, in the handsome UK edition. Why are we at NecroScope so damn excited about this? Because Breathers is - in our opinion - still one of the very best zombie novels of the past few years, hitherto only available direct from the US. So: we're urging all serious Australian zomfic fans to run out and purchase a copy right now from their local bookstore. And if your local bookstore doesn't stock Breathers, demand they order it!

* So you'd think at least one Australian bookstore would wise up and make the effort to actually stock some of these hard-to-get zombie titles. Oh, wait...)