The Walking Dead universe has been around for a decade but many fans have only just recently begun their exploration. With the advent of The Walking Dead television show on AMC, hordes of new devotees have joined the legions of comic book fans worldwide in enjoying Robert Kirkman's thrilling zombie saga. I, like many folks, began watching the show first and then came to the comics afterwards. I realized early on that there are some stark differences between the two worlds--ones that almost render the two story archs as completely separate.
As anyone who has read the comics will tell you, the Governor is established almost immediately as being a very, very bad guy. On the show, however, the depths of his evil have yet to be seen. In either case, though, little is known about the back story of the super villain. I was thrilled when I received The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor for Christmas because I figured it would be a great read and would shed some light onto the motivation behind the character's heinous acts and twisted identity. Much to my disappointment, this book has fallen far short of my expectations and, in my opinion, is wholly undeserving both of the label at the top of the cover page and the lofty review score here on Amazon.
Now, the last thing that most people seem to care about when it comes to what they enjoy reading is the quality of the writing itself. It's part of the reason why so many terrible novels enjoy meteoric, seemingly overnight success. It's also the only reason I can think of that this book--one that is rife not simply with an inexcusable quantity of typographical errors, poor form, a surfeit of unnecessary detail, and a ridiculous amount of repetition--could have earned a New York Times Bestseller title. The only thing that makes sense to me is that fans of the show (and possibly the comics) saw the novel and jumped at it simply because of the title and the man behind the material.
With that said, I'm sure many people will roll their eyes at the aforementioned laundry list of complaints about the writing. The point of this review though isn't simply to bash this novel for its terrible technical issues. Instead, it's meant to elucidate and enumerate some specific things that make the writing SO bad that the story becomes a secondary aspect. To date, I've never read a book that is THIS bad at telling what is at its heart a simple if not redundant story. The biggest problem is that the worst aspects of the novel repeat themselves numerous times. One thing that annoyed me repeatedly was the authors' use of extensive, unnecessary lists. Case(s) in point:
p. 19 "The kitchen is a cornucopia, brimming with upper-class provisions and luxuries: gourmet coffees, immersion blenders, crystal goblets, wine racks, handmade pastas, fancy jams and jellies, condiments of every variety, expensive liqueurs, and cooking gadgets of every description. The giant Viking range is spotless, and the massive Sub-Zero refrigerator is packed with expensive meats and fruits and spreads and dairy products and little white Chinese carryout boxes full of still-fresh leftovers."
I feel like the authors sat down and said to themselves, "Hmm...let's think of everything a rich people keep in their kitchens," jotted it all down, and put it into the book.
p. 33 "Their moods improve slightly the next morning after a huge breakfast of scrambled eggs and slab bacon and grits and ham and griddlecakes and fresh peaches and sweet tea. The fragrant mélange fills with [sic] entire house with the welcoming odors of coffee and cinnamon and smoked meats sizzling."
A sixth grader wouldn't use the word "and" that many times in a single sentence.
Later, on the same page: "They find a treasure trove of supplies and building materials: woodpiles for fireplaces, extra planking under decks, more food in the neighbors' refrigerators, cans of gas in the garages, winter coats and boots, boxes of nails, liquor, blowtorches, bottled water, a short-wave radio, a laptop, a generator, stacks of DVDs, and a gun rack in one of the basements with several hunting rifles and boxes of shells."
As an English teacher, I've seen writing like this before. More often than not, it's the sign of a writer who has no idea what to say but who needs simply to fill the page. It would be one thing if the items listed played a critical role in the plot of the story but they don't.
Another sign of an unconfident writer (or at least an unimaginative one) is the repetition of an adjective. The protagonist is referred to as "ropy" or as having "ropy musculature" almost a dozen times but the most annoying descriptors, hands down, are the ones used to describe another overweight character. In the span of only a few pages, he is referred to as fat, obese, big, giant, massive, and plump, as if the authors were afraid that we'd forget about his size and how critical it is to the story (spoiler alert: it isn't).
Worse still is the children's horror story-type stabs at building suspense and the atrocious attempts at evoking an emotional response from the reader. One prime example of the latter occurs when a character (who will remain nameless to avoid a spoiler moment) is dying:
"It's over," _____ manages in a feeble whisper, and his eyes roll back for a moment. Then he sees the nail gun in ___'s hand. With his big bloody sausage fingers, ___ reaches for the muzzle."
Nothing tears at the heartstrings more than reading about a dying man's big bloody sausage fingers!
Finally, one of the most obnoxious, distracting things that recurs throughout the novel is the overuse of unnecessary details. There's a sliding scale of egregiousness that ranges from an insane quantity of brand names to details that are both unnecessary AND factually inaccurate (p. 101 "At approximately 10:22 A.M. Central Standard Time..." Really? You're going to say approximately and then give an exact time in the WRONG TIME ZONE!?) to things like THIS--almost an ENTIRE PAGE of useless information:
p. 107 "Very few production cars on the road--in the U.S., at least--are capable of attaining any kind of speed in reverse. First of all, there's the gear problem. Most cars, vans, pickups, and sport-utility vehicles that come off the line have five or six forward gears but only one for reverse. Second of all, most vehicles have front suspensions designed to go forward and not backward. This prevents drivers from getting up a head of steam in reverse. Third of all, in reverse you're usually steering by looking over your shoulder, and pushing cars to top speeds in this fashion usually terminates in spectacular spinouts.
On the other hand, the vehicle...is a 2011 Platinum Cadillac Escalade with all-wheel drive and tricked-out torsion bars for any off-road applications that ace mechanic Calvin R. Donlevy of Greencove Lane might have endeavored to undertake in the backwaters of Central Georgia (in happier times). The vehicle weighs in at nearly four tons, and is close to seventeen feet long, with a StabiliTrak electronic stability control system (standard on all Platinum models). Best of all, it's equipped with a rearview camera that displays on a generous seven-inch navigation screen built into the dash."
I'll let that sink in for a moment.
First of all, the first paragraph reads more like a grade-schooler's report about cars that go vroom than something out of a New York Times Best--oh, wait.
Second of all, the second paragraph might as well be a Cadillac advertisement.
Third of all, how does ANY of that information enhance the story about the Governor!?
In short, it doesn't and it's not the only page that's like that. Truth be told, if you're a fan of either the comics or the television show, you'd be better served avoiding this nonsense "novel" and devise your own history for the Governor. The odds are that it would be better than what Robert Kirkman and Jay Bonansinga created in this hot mess AND it would save you from having to read through endless sentences that talk about what rich people have and what cars are like and how many things everyone had for breakfast and how fat one character is and how big and strong the other character is and how many different brands there are to mention and how many different street names there are and what time it is halfway across the country even though the story takes place in Georgia and that gravitational forces make people go boom when the accelerator pedal is pressed and that those same gravitational forces make people go boom the other way when the brake pedal is pressed and...
...I hope you get the picture.
