Casimir lives in the sprawling city of Constantinople...Illinois. He moved to the cold urban landscape to be closer to his girlfriend Jane, but by the time he got to town, Jane had decided to move on. Ex-girlfriend woes suddenly seem very trivial, though, when Casimir witnesses some of the first walking dead to rise in the zombie apocalypse. Next thing he knows, he's careening around town with a weird old man named Emblem, and trying to figure out how he'll live to see another day.
Switch POVs, and meet Ravilious: a young student of spookiness who is forced to share a dorm room with Dan, a guy who is even more dark and gothy than himself. It's hard for poor Ravilious to come to terms with being the least-weird person in the room, especially considering that he once resurrected his dead pet gerbil. But Ravilious bravely continues with his study of a wacky book called the Codex Necromantia, though Dan knows more about it than he does and keeps trying to make Rav into his apprentice.
Switch POVs again and we see General Radcliffe and his ineffective troops gear up for some urban warfare. They have a quirky level of unprofessionalism that's kind of like Yossarian and the boys in Catch-22. Before long, it's clear that the story is meshed together in different time frames, and poor Ravilious is about to set off a chain of events that lead to Casimir and General Radcliffe's predicaments.
Codex is written in a very talky, high-vocabulary style which I enjoy, because the narration mirrors the way Casimir and Ravilious think. It's a stylized approach, using certain writing strategies like having Casimir voice his inner thoughts out loud, but I didn't mind it at all. Reading this book is like putting on a crazy costume for Halloween--it's supposed to be fun, not realistic.
Downsides: 1. Dan's dialogue can get a little infodumpy. In general, it was more fun to follow along with clueless Casimir that to listen to Dan's ongoing commentary. 2. The freaky parts were slightly too freaky for me, more on the "horror" side of the urban fantasy spectrum.
This book reads like Shaun of the Dead meets The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's darkly funny, and contains things like wild ambulance rides, pyromancers, and armies of French revenants. If you like action and comedy and aren't easily squicked out, this zombie novel could be a great one for you.
Funny lines:
-"Dan removed the smirk on his face and replaced it with a look that, if placed next to that of a sad orphan puppy sitting in the rain outside of a biscuit store, would've resulted in a large pile of soggy biscuits in front of Dan and none in front of the puppy."(pg 13).
-"Casimir had moved to a new city and found heartbreak, zombies and drug abusers. His parents had been right about something."
