The Code of the Zombie Pirate (Review)

Recently I read a rather interesting and quirky title known as "The Code of the Zombie Pirate". The title says it all, the book is a faux guidebook on how to efficiently  and effectively run/manage a crew of zombie pirates. The book assumes a few things about zombies for its premise. First, it assumes that they are made with the assistance of "voodoo priests" (book's spelling), that they can convert people with bites and scratches, and that each zombie is bound to a person and that person can have many zombies at their bidding. Oh yeah, it also assumes it is the 1700s.

The book starts off pretty interesting and humorous, the author's writing style and language comes off easily, and it makes it pretty damn easy to read. . .to start with anyway. Kenemore is rather fond of dropping the f-bomb, and he establishes this pretty early on in the book. The first few chapters address the advantages of piracy, the reasons for it, and the advantages of having zombie pirates on your crew and why your crew should only consist of zombie pirates. The author makes a lot of silly little assumptions about how you should appear, like the "intimidating factor" of a rotting boa, and how you should wear moldy cloths that are falling apart. Not surprisingly, a lot of the advice early in the book contradicts or makes it much harder to follow the advice in the later part of the book. How are you going to hold jewels in your pocket if they are rotting? What good is a leather strap to hold guns when it is falling apart?

Now these complaints might seem a tad silly. You might be going "But Sir Doctor HRM OB/GYN Professor Counselor Lieutenant Conor, the whole thing is supposed to be a joke!" Which, to be fair, is try, but the book misses the mark a lot of times. Some parts were as dry and boring as a math textbook, while others were just hilarious. Sadly, Mr.Kenemore seems to have used up all his joke material in the first half of the book. Once you get past chapter 12 it is all the same recycled zombies are terrifying, or pirates are really grody and crude and like annoying European navies. Some of the things in the later half of the book were intriguing, engaging, and interesting (such as his suggestion on how to deal with sea monsters) but it just got so much harder to read. I had to force myself through several chapters.

Don't let my complaints fool you though, it is an entertaining enough book, but definitely not one that you just sit down and read. I'd say it is more of an airplane book or a bathroom reader.

Score: 6/10 brains

(On my scale, a 5 is average)