Posts Tagged ‘mark tufo’

Shrouded World bookThis is a collaboration between Mark Tufo and John O’Brien.

As you know I’ve been a big fan of Mark Tufo books for a while, especially the Zombie Fallout series, so when I saw this I thought I’d better give it a read.

It was quite an odd start. The chapters of the book are split into the story from each character. So one chapter would be Mike and the next chapter would be Jack. Actually it seemed odd at first, but worked really well. Talbot was an old friend, but Jack was some new interloper, so this brought him into ‘my’ story quite well and filled in a bit more information about him.

The chapters are pretty much a parallel story of both main characters and how they are dealing with being dropped into this new, strange world – I don’t think I’m creating any spoilers by saying that. Also, I don’t think it’s going to be a spoiler to say that their paths cross?

Oh, how could I omit this from my review? Mike doesn’t just land in this new world, he crashes there with an old Zombie Fallout favourite – John the Tripper. If anything he’s trippier than ever in this book. The way his character progresses in this book kind of reminds me of how Tommy’s character evolved in the early books. Instead of producing Pop Tarts out fo thin air, Tripper seems to be able to produce something a little more intoxicating 🙂 It’s kind of sweet and funny and, yeah a but weird. But we like weird, eh?

There are elements from both the character’s original worlds, but also some new frightening elements that they need to work out. I don’t want to give too much away but there are zombies and there all also night runners, and a something else…

I really liked the storyline and love how the characters interacted.  Both are very strong characters but it seemd to work very well. The authors clearly had a good time writing this collaboration and it shines through. I loved it and as it was left with a cliffhanger, I would imagine that there will be a sequel? I hope so as I’ll have it on my Kindle within seconds of the release!

As a footnote, this book prompted me to check out John O’brien’s series – I finished them all one after the other. Although not strictly zombies, I’ll write up a review shortly…

Zombie FalloutOK, 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

Zombie Fallout Series

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?