Lenni Reviews: The Walking Dead Fall of the Governor Part Two

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In the continuing saga of some heretofore unknown desire to torture myself, it was with a heaving sigh that I picked up the fourth and final book in this "trilogy."

If you are just joining us, here is one, two, and three.

This last installment is the assault on the prison from the Woodbury resident's perspective. If you've read the previous books and/or the comics, it's pretty clear how The Governor has a stranglehold on the town and can get them to do whatever he wants so reading about how he got people from the prison, tortures Michonne, and Michonne getting her revenge but how The Governor manages to survive Michonne's attack is interesting. You get some more insights into Bob Stookey and Lilly Caul but even then, the whole thing falls flat. I still can't reconcile Lilly's transformation into The Governor's perfect soldier but this book does provide some back info as to why Lilly freaked out after (this should NOT be spoilers by now!) killing Lori and Judith. Personally, shooting unarmed women with babies is just wrong in and of itself but yeah, the back story is nice to know.

I don't want to give too much away but I will say the book does not end with the assault on the prison. You do get to find out what happens to Lilly and Woodbury in the aftermath of The Governor's death. It should not have taken four books to say what could have been said in a wicked cool side comic ("Re-Rise of Woodbury" perhaps?) and that is in the last 50 pages or so of just... Meh. All of it just feels like a deflated balloon. Things are wrapped up and explained but there's little punch to it. I will say, the writing stays on the level of Part One; to the point with plenty of gory zombie killin and 'splodin brains. If you don't like gore (then you're reading the wrong franchise) you may be turned off by all the muck here.

If I were to sum up all four, I would say the average fan could totally skip these and be just fine. If you're dying to know what happens to Lilly after the prison? Borrow book four and start at chapter seventeen. The books are jerky and boring. I didn't hate this one, I didn't roll my eyes, I'm even short on my usual biting sarcasm here; I just yawned a lot. Save your money for the comics.

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Lenni Reviews: The Walking Dead: Fall of the Governor Part One

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Like many, I tuned in for the premier of this season of The Walking Dead and as is very unlike me, I was physically in the room for the commercials. If you noticed in the title of this review, the trilogy has suddenly been transformed into NOT a trilogy. I noticed this in the commercial for the book and promptly lost my shit. Like many who pre-ordered this book (I had it on reserve since my last review) my first thought upon seeing "part one" was "Gee, thanks for the shameless money-grab." It's the most blatant act of bait and switch I've ever seen and as a fan, I am straight up insulted. This is precisely why I take full advantage of my dayjob as a librarian: I can screen a series to see if it's worth my money to own them. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not.

This is a case of not.

That being said, once I got over the "sticker shock" and got the book in my hot little hands; I remembered what a very wise teacher of mine said in high school about going into something with your mind made up beforehand. I opened to page one with an open mind.

No, seriously. I left my extreme anger and sarcasm for the first two books behind. And that was really hard, believe you me. This book comes in at a mere 245 pages; which leaves little room for a realistic transformation of Lilly Caul.

Fall of the Governor picks up not long after Road to Woodbury. Lilly still hates the Governor, he still doesn't trust her, and Woodbury is still lead by a creepy bastard who keeps zombie heads in fish tanks and a zombie girl on a leash in his house. Lilly goes on a couple raids and she seems to have he right attitude of it not being play time and you need to watch your ass. But her switch from "this guy is out of hand" to "gee, I think he has the right idea because the world is harsh and cruel" is so sudden, it is beyond belief. If the character straight out says "I think it's Stockholm Syndrome" (I'm paraphrasing here but Lilly used the term), the transition was too abrupt. It was forced to comply with the assault on the prison we all know is gonna happen.

Other than that, I have to admit, this book is MUCH improved over the previous installments. If you've read my reviews of those, that's not saying much but the fact remains. The writing in the beginning is "take this guy's thesaurus away" drab again but when the novel meets the comic, it picked up in quality. The cynic in me believes it's because the world was already built; you just hadda transcribe the events in the comic. But you can still screw up that part and Bonansinga didn't. Kudos to you, sir.

Even the new angle of the story coming from the other side of the coin, as it were, isn't enough to separate the novel from the comic. You've read the comic, you know what happens. The side story with Lilly and her new boyfriend(?) Austin is forgettable. Glen and Maggie are a better couple to watch, in my opinion. Besides, who wants to hear them muse about their relationship when you get to read the prose version of the Governor and Michonne meeting face to face. That was the best writing I have seen in this series so far. Keep it at that caliber, and I may not hate the next one from first glance.

As I finished the book, I did check out some other reviews and to sum up, I agree with them; it's a cheat. It's not fair to split up the conclusion this way and these books do NOT live up to the promise of the comic books or the show. They are forgettable at best and cringe-worthingly bad at worst. I am only looking forward to the last book to say I finished the series. Because, let's face it: We all read this story already. And it was better the first time they told it.

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Lenni Reviews: The Walking Dead: The Road to Woodbury

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I love you guys. No, really, I do. And you better love me, too, for reading this book when I had a feeling it would be just like the first one.

Road to Woodbury suffers from the same problems as Rise of the Governor; uneven writing, cliche zombie tropes, thin characters; the works. Now, if you want to read this book or haven’t read the comics (which really, if you haven’t dafuq you doing here?), there will be spoilers for both in the review because I just can't properly express what bothered me about the book without giving away some details.

I’m serious.

Spoilers here.

Last chance...

Alright, here we go.

This novel follows Lilly Caul as she tries to survive the aftermath of the plague and ends up in Woodbury. At least the title here is accurate; there is a road and Lilly uses it to get to Woodbury and does so WAAAYYY earlier in this book than the Governor became the Governor in the first book. When Lilly gets there, she is instantly aware there is something rotten in Woodbury (bonus points if you get my Shakespeare reference). The Governor is in full on evil fuckwit mode and creepy from word one. How the wimpy asthmatic from the end of Rise of the Governor vanished is never told. But there he is in all his murdery, rape-y, heads-in-fish tank-y glory as if he was plucked from the comic, NOT from the first book.

So, there’s a time lapse. Lenni can be down with that. But not a single character drops a clue the man was anything other than complete evil from the moment he was put in charge. I get the feeling I arrive in Woodbury like this:

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And also, he spends exactly two random pages having a sob session over the monster he has become. It was out of place. All of a sudden, he spends two pages out of 288 to lament how he has become a monster like his brother, Philip, in order to survive, despite the fact he hadda kill his brother and thereby Philip didn’t survive. He literally pauses to cry about being a murdering fuckwit then immediately goes back to being a murdering fuckwit. It was completely out of place and I didn’t feel any sympathy for him. I was annoyed and just wanted him to go back to killing things to make it stop.

Lilly despises him from the start (like Michonne does in the show) and wants out. She hatches a plot to kill him, it fails because: zombies. Then inexplicably, the Governor does NOT kill her like he did pretty much anyone else who looked at him funny and she vows she’s gonna kill him one day. You heard me right: The villain who tortured Michonne for biting his ear off, keeps his zombie niece (or "daughter" in the show) as a pet, does a crappy job of chopping Tyreese's head off, and kills people on a whim for the lulz lets Lilly live after she conspired to kill him and failed. Does not compute!

My other problem with this? At no point in the comic does Lilly seem to outright object to anything that happens till she finds out she’s shot a fleeing woman with her infant (Lori and Judith). And I went back to the comics and checked. Twice.

To sum up my issue: the entire book, Lilly despises the Governor and can’t want to kill him yet in the comics, she had no problem rolling up to the prison at his side. And if she was just going along for the ride for the chance to kill him, it STILL doesn’t jive because she spends the entire novel whining about the deaths of innocent people. She’s got a lot of collateral damage on her hands if the whole plot was to somehow kill the Governor in the prison. It doesn't make sense to me how "Lilly" who failed to kill the Governor in the novel and "Lilly" who killed Lori and her baby are the same woman.

I am no perfect writer. I am sure there are cliches, typos, grammar mistakes and dangling plot points in my books but something like this was like a flood light to the eyes. If you're going to transmit your property to another medium and say it's a prequel, not an alternate universe, at least have it make sense.

I didn’t want to throw the book this time but it did give me a headache. On the plus side, it read faster than the first book and the descriptions of zombie mauling and oozing, decayed flesh are enough to make you grimace. But at $24.99, I expect better. No, I DEMAND better. Because the collected comics come in at $14.99 for the volumes, $34.99 for the big books, and $59.99 for the compendiums, there needs to be more bang for my buck. More happens in any of those comics to warrant the prices than in the hardcover novels.

Well, at least it’s over and there won’t be another one.

Aww, shit...

Lenni Reviews: The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor

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With the new season debuting this fall, with every Walking Dead fan’s favorite villain making his appearance, and with another Walking Dead novel coming out in October, it seems a good a time as any to talk about “The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor.”

I do enjoy zombie novels (even though I refuse to read them at night. A girl only makes that mistake ONCE) and Walking Dead is high on my list of favorite zombie tomes. But from the first few pages, one thing is clear: If you haven’t read the comics, the novel won’t be as fun. Oh, you’ll get it; zombies bad. Eat the living. That sucks for them. But the foundations the comics built are important to understanding some of the little nuances in this book.

I wanted to love this book, I really did. But it suffers from the same dragging as the show; long stretches of time where nothing is happening. Of course, don’t get attached to anyone. It’s just not worth it. I had a hard time feeling anything for these characters anyway since they all seem to be set up to fit into the inevitable events in the comic. The writing isn’t impressive. Very drab and full of clichés. Unless there’s zombie killin to be done. Then there’s some pretty stomach churning descriptions.

The title is deceptive. It’s not so much the “Rise of the Governor” more like “The 320 Page Slog To Get The Guy Who Will Be The Governor To The Town He Needs To Be In.” I'd want to know that but it's not why I picked up the book. I was hoping for more insight to how to the plague started; figuring it was part of how this man came to be. And when you get to the end… Oh, the ending…

This made just about as much sense. (Source)

 Alright, I grew up on Twilight Zone. I love me a good twist ending. But this wasn’t so much of a twist as a surefire way to make me throw the book across the room. I won’t spoil it for you but in this humble librarian’s opinion, the ending was a twist for the sake of a twist; lacking in sense and destroying the continuity. The Governor in the comic doesn’t quite make sense now that I’ve read the novel. I read the novel for clarity, because I wanted to know how such a twisted and violent man got to be so freakin awful and all I got was more confused.

Perhaps the next installment will explain how a man is capable of what The Governor did in the graphic novels. For now, if you like this villain, you may want to skip this book. Unless you want to just read a zombie book with Kirkman's name on it. Then by all means, go for it. Lenni suggests getting it from your local library.