Recommended Reading: Kings of the Dead by Tony Faville

Let me state first that I am not a book reviewer. Sometimes I find it hard to put in to words why I like books. Strange, maybe, since I’m a writer myself, but that’s just the way it is. I like what I like and that’s it. That’s why I don’t talk about a lot of books on this website, because I don’t want to sound like a babbling idiot. At the risk of that, though, there’s one book I felt I should briefly talk about, and that’s Kings of the Dead by Tony Faville.

Recently revised and expanded and released by Permuted Press, Kings of the Dead is one of those zombie books that you just can’t help but love, despite the genre perhaps being a little overexposed. You know, same plot day in and day out, same ol’ shambling zombies chasing you down, yadda yadda yadda. However, with Kings of the Dead, Faville manages to suck you in and forget about all that for a few hours.

Written in the “diary entry” style, Kings won me over with positioning the main character, Cole, writing in his journal sporadically, with short burst that don’t convey a lot of transcribed conversations. I don’t know about you, but when I write in a journal, I don’t write down a conversation I had with someone word for word, so for me that made the book seem more realistic given its style. Another thing I liked was that Cole gave a tip of the hat to all the knowledge he had gained about the undead from the movies. This works for me because as a fan of the genre, if a real zombie outbreak were to occur, I certainly would think back to all the movies and books I’ve read on the subject and use that to my advantage. Too many times zombie books are written like we the reader, or the characters, have no idea what’s going on. Like it’s taking place in some alternate universe where no one’s ever heard of zombies. The fact that Cole acknowledged that the genre existed before the outbreak, tickled me to no end. It was very refreshing.

I also enjoyed the camaraderie between Cole and his group of survivors. You see it all the time in other books and films: survivors infighting with one another, backstabbing, blah blah blah. Here Faville manages to bring together group of people who know that they better be on the same page if they want to survive, and they strive to achieve that goal. Well done!

Is Kings of the Dead a perfect zombie novel? No, of course not. No novel is perfect. But for the reasons listed above, and a few others I can’t put in to words, Kings of the Dead is a great read that any fan of the genre will love. Hell, I enjoyed it more than Day by Day Armageddon, another popular book written in the same style.

In short, if you’re looking for a good zombie book to kick back with for a while, I highly recommend Kings of the Dead. You can find it now on Amazon in print, or for your Kindle, as well as various other places online where books are sold.