REVIEW: The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor

Like every zombie-crazed fanatic out there, I'm a huge fan of The Walking Dead--comic, TV show, webisodes, etc. If it's got "Walking Dead" on it, I'm there. So when I saw that Robert Kirkman was writing a novel about the ever-so-evil character of The Governor, well...I had to get my hands on it. And fast. And I did.

NetGalley, a neat little reviewer's dream, allowed me to read it before the publication date, but due to some unfortunate medical situations, I didn't get to read/write a review until later. That said, the book was well worth the wait. In fact, I'll probably have to read it again because I sped through it so fast.

The story is your basic "uh-oh, zombies!" type of situation: the dead are coming back and they're hungry, and in the meanwhile, civilization is going straight to hell. The main characters include the man who will become "The Governor," his brother, a little girl, and some friends who are doomed to become zombie fodder as they struggle to get out of a bad situation and find a safe place. That's pretty much all the plot you really need in a zombie novel, as long as the characters are interesting and the "close calls" are nice and juicy (and by juicy, I mean bloody). Rise of the Governor has this in spades, and on top of all that, it has a nifty little twist at the end that I did NOT see coming. I always appreciate that in a book.

The writing team of Kirkman and Jay Bonansinga (not to be confused with Sheldon Cooper's 'Bazinga!', btw) seems to work well together. There's a smooth narrative that should be familiar to fans of the comic. My only quibble--and it's a small one--is the use of the present tense throughout the book. For some reason, it distracted me at first. I got over it.

This book is meant to be the first of a trilogy, and I'm looking forward to what will come next. Somebody whisper in Kirkman's ear that he needs to flesh out the Daryl character from the show. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeze!