A review by rockinmama2ax
Rise of the Governor by Jay Bonansinga, Robert Kirkman
4.0
I'm an extreme fan of The Walking Dead in any form, and I was excited about the idea of these books. It is important that readers enter this series realizing that the characters and their stories do not coincide directly with those of the television series, though. This is comic book character development, rather.
All in all, the story is gruesome, thus its horror classification. Forcing yourself to imagine men brutally destroying zombies and one another, all the while attempting to salvage what little remains of their humanity is much more difficult that watching the same in a television series. It is much more intimate and invading in many ways.
The story follows the rise of the Governor, as the title aptly explains, and offers twists and turns every chapter that are sure to keep even the experienced horror reader on the edge of his or her seat. Readers see what makes the Governor tick; they meet Penny before she is turned; and they discover the Governor had a brother who traveled with him from the start of the apocalypse to their arrival at Woodbury. For sure, shockingly gruesome and stomach-turning scenes exist throughout, though the end of the book is probably the most shocking - a jaw-dropping moment to be sure - and one I had to reread three times and then spend a few hours considering before I fully accepted it.
As a caution, though, the book is extremely explicit. It uses language and graphic descriptions to deal with death and the loss of humanity in a way that forces readers to disconnect from emotion in order to really immerse themselves in it.
All in all, the story is gruesome, thus its horror classification. Forcing yourself to imagine men brutally destroying zombies and one another, all the while attempting to salvage what little remains of their humanity is much more difficult that watching the same in a television series. It is much more intimate and invading in many ways.
The story follows the rise of the Governor, as the title aptly explains, and offers twists and turns every chapter that are sure to keep even the experienced horror reader on the edge of his or her seat. Readers see what makes the Governor tick; they meet Penny before she is turned; and they discover the Governor had a brother who traveled with him from the start of the apocalypse to their arrival at Woodbury. For sure, shockingly gruesome and stomach-turning scenes exist throughout, though the end of the book is probably the most shocking - a jaw-dropping moment to be sure - and one I had to reread three times and then spend a few hours considering before I fully accepted it.
As a caution, though, the book is extremely explicit. It uses language and graphic descriptions to deal with death and the loss of humanity in a way that forces readers to disconnect from emotion in order to really immerse themselves in it.