Review of Kings of the Dead by Tony Faville

Imagine a world where the dead walk the earth. How would you survive? Is there anything to live for? According to Zombie Hunter Tony there is. In his new book Tony takes on a roll no one wants. He is a survivor in a post apocalyptic world but he is not alone. He is joined by his wife, Heather and two friendly and familiar faces. Derek and Bren from the popular podcast Mail Order Zombie have featured rolls in the book.

The H1N1 virus better known as Swine Flu quickly spread around the world. Documented cases become more and more frequent, a vaccine is introduced and is set for distribution. The vaccine mutates into a virus that not only kills its host but turns them into mindless walking corpses. With the virus in full force Tony decides to find a safe place to hold up in until he can figure out what’s going on. Once he manages to do so he starts a journal to log what’s happening.

Kings of the Dead is a fun and entertaining read. This is Tony’s first book so there are a few mistakes. Most of them are just misspellings and the occasional grammatical mistake. Most, if not all of these mistakes have been fixed for the second edition. The flow of the story did need work. Some of the journal entries were spread out over long periods of time. There were no fillers for the time lapse and it felt like Tony wanted to rush through the story to make it to the end. When I wrote this review I had no idea Tony wrote this in 22 days as part of a contest. The pressure of the deadline does show in the book. I’m sure this was intentional to give the story a realistic feel. Nonetheless I would have still enjoyed to have been filled in. This is a quick read; there are spaces in between most of the sentences so it gives the appearance that the book is much longer than it really is. I finished the book over a course of three evenings.

The zombies in the book are the standard Romero zombies but some are no so traditional. There is an interesting element in the story where special hyper zombies make an appearance. These zombies have special abilities the normal zombies don’t have. One, being a heart beat! You can read Tony’s journal for yourself by picking up a copy of Kings of the Dead. It is available at Amazon but you can also buy a signed copy directly from Tony. You will not be disappointed.