The Walking Dead Book One HC
Sep. 8th, 2010 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catalyst2I bought this last week and finished reading for the second time today. I liked this a lot
It may be about zombies and the resulting apocalypse but it makes no attempt to explain how it all came about - and that does two things:
1) allows different protagonists in the story to have different approaches to the zombies ("You can't kill them, they may just be in the early stages of healing" as one different take) and
2) avoids stupid pseudo-explanations that make no sense and distract from the core of the story.
I also liked that we see very few zombies on the whole but their presence is almost always devastating because almost every attack results in the death of a character. The deaths are so random too that no-one feels safe and walking around no corner safely can be taken for granted. Despite all the damage that the zombies do, in the end, they have to confront themselves and the consequences of decisions that they make more often.
The overwhelming sense of survivor guilt that permeates most of the characters is clear too - not the happy care-free lives so many other books present. There is a mixture of success and failure, humour and tragedy and precious life and abrupt death that I was never sure what was next.
I gather that there are no extras in the TPB's but there is a small sketch galley and a selection of issue covers at the back of the book that are an interesting and insightful window into the creative process. I am looking forward to buying Book Two.
It may be about zombies and the resulting apocalypse but it makes no attempt to explain how it all came about - and that does two things:
1) allows different protagonists in the story to have different approaches to the zombies ("You can't kill them, they may just be in the early stages of healing" as one different take) and
2) avoids stupid pseudo-explanations that make no sense and distract from the core of the story.
I also liked that we see very few zombies on the whole but their presence is almost always devastating because almost every attack results in the death of a character. The deaths are so random too that no-one feels safe and walking around no corner safely can be taken for granted. Despite all the damage that the zombies do, in the end, they have to confront themselves and the consequences of decisions that they make more often.
The overwhelming sense of survivor guilt that permeates most of the characters is clear too - not the happy care-free lives so many other books present. There is a mixture of success and failure, humour and tragedy and precious life and abrupt death that I was never sure what was next.
I gather that there are no extras in the TPB's but there is a small sketch galley and a selection of issue covers at the back of the book that are an interesting and insightful window into the creative process. I am looking forward to buying Book Two.
