OK, first things first. This is my favourite zombie series.
It took me a while to get around to buying the first book, despite the good reviews, due to the cover. It just didn’t grab me in the way that other covers do. Anyway, I got myself around that little obstacle and downloaded it (I’ve been using my Kindle to read everything for a couple of years ago). Oh, and it was only 72p so I figured I couldn’t go wrong!
Right, onto the storyline. The main character in this book, Mike Talbot, writes the story as a series of journals. He tells the story, but quite often drifts off at tangents, which actually I like as I tend to do that myself. It tells the story of the Talbot family at the start and during the ongoing zombie apocalypse. There’s also some third person narrative from others in the clan such as Talbot’s wife.
Talbot is an ex-marine now roadworker, who’s a bit of a survivalist at heart and has sort of been waiting for something like a zombie apocalypse for a while. The first book is about the start of the rise of the walking dead and the subsequent books continue the story and the action. There are even zombie vampires – please don’t let that put you off as it all makes sense when you read the series!
There’s Talbot’s wickedly sarcastic and sometimes, OK often, very dark humour throughout this book. Things don’t always work out for him and despite what he says, he doesn’t always think things through properly. He’s not scared of anything, except maybe the missus. There is fantastic banter between the characters, especially Talbot and BT. You find yourself more than liking the guy. You want him to be with you if you’re in a zombie apocalypse.
I read the first book really quickly, and thankfully, as I’d been late in finding this excellent series, I was able to download one book after the other. In fact I read books 1-5 in just over a week. It was torture waiting for Mr Tufo to write book 6!
The books in the series are:
– Zombie Fallout
– Zombie Fallout 2 – A Plague on Your Family
– Zombie Fallout 3 – The End…
– Zombie Fallout 3.5 – Dr Hugh Mann
– Zombie Fallout 4 – The End Has Come And Gone
– Zombie Fallout 5 – Alive in a Dead World
– Zombie Fallout 6 – ‘Til Death Do Us Part
The author, Mark Tufo, is great with the fans and has a Facebook page here – Mark Tufo Facebook
Let me leave you with this – what would Talbot do?
Quirky Zombie 
Hi just wanted to take a moment to thank you for your review. I appreciate you taking the time to write this and obviously stoked you are enjoying the series! Have a great day! (Henry says HI)
I can’t tell you how chuffed I am that you commented on my blog – thanks!!!
Ok.. I am a love just about anything Zombie guy and I understand once you go down that road you need to suspend reality a bit but the problem I have with this series is that it takes that to a whole other lever.. you enjoy the bantering among not just a few characters but really every one in the book. That’s fine but the part that annoys me to death(no pun intended) is they go into an Abbott and Costello routine not just always, but also at the most ridiculous times. Hi speed car chases while being shot at and discussing rugby teams, surrounded by zombies moving in for the kill and cracking jokes that take up to minutes at time in conversations.. no matter how dangerous and near death they are, people find time for an A & C routine.. REALLY?? At one point even stopping a rescue attempt so a character can tell a funny story about Mike Talbot and his fear of heights.. everyone, including his wife, wanting to hear the story while he is seconds away from being pounced on by Zombies.. and if I have to read one more time about someone throwing up I will toss some myself.. about 100 times in the first 4 books alone.. guess that is his fall back gag (pun intended). Overall I like the series but I just feel that aspect is just way to silly when it happens constantly throughout the series.
I kinda know what you mean. The humour is one of the main parts I liked about the series… but… I’m currently reading book 7 and the humour has ramped up a bit. I’m one of those people that tends to have random thoughts in the mifddle of a crisis, so I can appreciate Mike’s thought patterns when things are going wrong. Book 7 though is pushing it a bit…Still that’s not to say I’m not enjoyign book 7 🙂