Return to Woodbury: The Walking Dead: 8

This series of books is set in the same universe as The Walking Dead tv show and, I assume, the comic books (I've never read them but I know enough about them to make that assumption so excuse me if I'm mistaken). However, although a few of the characters from the show make an appearance in one of the books, the storyline is different. The books make you care very much about the characters, are action packed and, at times, heartbreaking. Make no mistake the authors are not afraid to dispatch a much loved character so be aware, there will be times you will find yourself welling up! And that is exactly what I loved about this series because, for me, if I don't connect to the people in a story I don't really care about the story itself. I read the entire series of 8 books in about 5 days, picking up my kindle at every opportunity and reluctantly turning it off at night to sleep. I read a lot of books but very few stay with me after finishing them. This series will. Hats off to the authors for a job brilliantly done.

Much the same and nothing new. I've quite enjoyed the adventures of Lilly in the series. But once again this one throws in a megalomaniac who Lilly and friends have to defeat. Come on!!! Be original!! Just surviving in this world could make a fun story without the constant fall back to 'nutters' who want to run it! The novel started well with Lilly dealing with a couple of unwelcome guests in the Ikea store and then sought of panned out till the little peak at the end.

I have loved every book so far. As I read this latest book in the series, I started to wonder if the author in fact hates the lead character of Lily Caul. Does she never catch a break??! Her motives were highly questionable, at times completely illogical and for me inconsistent with her character. The plot seemed to be repeat of previous volumes in the series with the same cliched bad guy and I was disappointed with what I felt was some lazy writing and badly executed scenes. Will not be in a hurry to read the next in series.

I have loved these stories. Massive TWD dead fan and have really enjoyed this alternative view of that universe. The series has been fantastic, until this one....Feels like it has been rushed out, very formulaic, no depth of story like the others, and didn't really take us anywhere from where the last book left off.On a separate note, I'd love a little more stability and allowing the group to establish themselves somewhere again. Maybe Woodbury, maybe somewhere else. The beauty of this series for me has been the community building together and then facing adversity.This book was just the adversity part, and not a new one at that.

Starting to tire of these books. No character development any more. They're dead as soon as you get to know them, lessens the drama and just gets annoying.

Perfect

Another amazing book from Jay Bonansinga, if your a fan of the show you will definitely enjoy these books.

Jay Bonansinga's books are without doubt among the best I've ever had the pleasure of reading. I met him once at a Walker Stalker event in London. One of the nicest guys to meet too.

I have read all the walking dead comics and novels so far, so I have a decent understanding of the universe created by Kirkman and Bonansinga. I absolutely love it and will probably continue reading them until the series stops. Unfortunately lately the novels have not been as awesome. There were a few moments in this one where the characters took certain choices that either made little sense or knew something that would have been impossible for them to know. Bonansinga took a couple of easy choices and cheap writing along the way. I hope the future ones will improve to the regular high standard.

If you are a fan of the other books this is a must have. Lily gets even more bad ass.

Wow

awesome

This is the last book I will read in this series, the reasons why are:I wouldn’t follow Lilly into a fully stocked 7-11 store on a Tuesday afternoon, pre- apocalypse, because she would still figure out a way to get me killed. She makes horrible choices and her character has become grotesquely unbelievable.Your attempt to be intellectually superior in your writing style has left you exposed as a pseudointellectual. Why is that you ask?? You use words that are so obscure as to be distracting. We, the readers, want a zombie book, we are not looking for an opportunity to expand our vocabulary. You may even find that you can produce more material if you stopped wasting time looking up these obscure words and just used the common version of the word. Example (this is one of many, many, many examples): Inimitable AKA unique.Kudzu, kudzu, kudzu and more kudzu. I would have to write that word about 1763 more times to come close to the amount of times you used it in this book. I get it’s a fun word to say, but at one point I almost tossed my tablet out of the window because I couldn’t stand the thought of reading it one more time. It is a weed, like all other weeds.It is impossible to get through more than two pages without a character crying….this is the same reason I stopped watching the Walking Dead, Rick is crying all of the time. You live in a zombie infested world, we will have no crying in said zombie infested world. Oh, and you can only have a “burning-intense-gut clenching-spine chilling” emotion so many times in a week, your cast of characters have them every 6 to 12 minutes.Please do a little bit of research on your weapons. This is the one area you should have nailed by now, a gun is the most important part of the zombie world. Now, I understand that I’m reading a book about zombies, a fantastical (you can use that word in your next book, it means many things, but this time it was used in place of the more commonly used word, imaginary) situation whereas the dead come back to life. But in this imaginary world, we need some facts to make it real to us, make it so we can see ourselves surviving in this world and forming a new world. But when you say things like “pulled back the hammer on the Glock” we realize that you don’t care enough to get the most simple of details correct and that is insulting.

The Walking Dead Book Series “Return to Woodbury Book #8 “Fans of the graphic novels, comics, and T.V. show on AMC will love this book series, no matter how bad it is, myself included. #8 didn't reach out and grab me and I found myself skimming through large portions for many reasons, the main being the repetition in descriptions of the walker's attributes, results of gunfire hitting them, and the endless sea of similes. Not a fun read like the others. This was a chore to read and a chore to finish.Many things are wrong across the board for all of the books in this series. I wonder why Kirkman would put his name on this and why he didn't seek out an author with more talent and a "feeling" for words and storytelling. There are hundreds of writers out there in this genre who are just starting out and self publishing e-books he could have chosen from who really do have amazing talent.The book blurb says it is 4 years in and the book says it is 5, 2, & 3 1/5. This has been a problem since the start. Book#1 starts in late October, one week in, at a later point we are told it has been six months. The time frame makes for confusion.The worst thing a writer can do, poor editing, seems to be his SOP. If he would hire good editors and re-edit the whole series this would go a long way in making the entire series more enjoyable. We have the whole rotten bag in this series.The extreme overuse of similes goes on and on. To a ridiculous point. The wind “Shaking the bones of the place as a giant petulant child might shake a toy building”Lots of fancy words never used in everyday conversation. While this is a great thing to broaden our vocabulary, I am reading these for fun. Punctuation, please learn what a comma is and use it, give up your love of the em-dash, ( ha ha threw that in for fun) , learn what … ellipsis is for, and throw out the word AND and words and sentences and similes and words that are extraneous and overused.Thunderstruck…who uses this word anyway? Gravitational pull, kudzu, nesting.Run on sentences, short sentences of only two to three words, redundancies from repeating the same information in same and different ways, over and over and over. How many times do we need to the first and last names of characters, their race, and the eye color of walkers? Repeated dialogue, scenes where the action is confusing and his meaning is unclear due to bad transitions, unnatural phrasing, and confusing narrative and digressions.Lots of copy and paste from the previous books with a few words here and there changed. CHARACTERS skin color, full name, and description only need to be given once, maybe twice at the most, anything else is an insult to the reader's intelligence. And use the same descriptive, please. Saying "the black African American" . "Our Mexican American mother who is hispanic" is redundantFIREARMS. Wow. Where to start with this one. He needs to sign up for the NRA basic course. Do his research before he writes this stuff. A shotgun is not an assault rifle nor is it a squirrel gun. It is a magazine, not a clip. A 50 cal. is a big butt gun, weighing in at around 85 pounds and 5 feet long, takes two people to load this puppy. It makes a big boom and is accurate up to 1250 yards. You will not "clip" a side mirror, you will destroy the whole car.A Tec-9 is not a machine gun, it is a 9 mm semi-auto blowback pistol. It is not full auto and is only trying to look cool. They are cheaply made, very poor accuracy, one of the worst made firearms out there. You would not find these at the armory.In the heat of battle they are trying to load the magazine? While driving down the road at high speeds? They haven't figured out they can load up a whole bunch of these cool little guys and carry them in their pockets?Lily - A girl scout would have made better decisions. Her sense of urgency was nill. Who stands around gabbing, crying, and hugging while being chased by a horde of 1000 walkers and a psycho cult leader who is shooting a 50 cal at you?The big fight scene was maybe 30 pages long, I didn’t count, just guessing, and was so ridiculous I was laughing.Huh what? “Rafael is happy to keep himself inside the hermetically sealed safety of this ramshackle prison” “Twenty feet above him the corrugated tin roof of his prison dormitory has lost a single rusty panel”The rain “vaporized the garden”

This series and the Lilly Caul story line has played itself out. It was an okay read, but the story has gotten a bit stale after the last book and into this one. Jay spends pages getting into the mind and backstory of characters who have the potential to be amazing to only snuff them from the pages with a stray bullet or random walker bite. Yeah I get it, get us attached and "shock" us with their death, but it gets old quick and has been overplayed throughout the last two novels.Lilly is still a pretty amazing heroine, but her story and that of Woodbury has run its course.

I agree with the reviews saying this book was hastily written. A bunch of action but nothing really happened, if that makes any sense. I've ready the entire Walking Dead series from Jay Bonansinga and this was by far my least favorite book. It could have been a few chapters at the beginning of the next book. A series of rash decisions made by the protagonist, combined with a bunch of "Wtf? You can't be serious" moments (unbelievable even for a book set in the zombie apocalypse) made for a disappointing read. I'm hoping the next book is better.

OK, I don't think I could ever read a Walking Dead Book.The books are the long written books, not the comics version.But my nephew who's spending a little time in jail has now read all the Walking Dead Books.He loves them and cannot wait to receive the next.So, fantasy, if you like this subject, then these books are an interesting read.

Once again a very good story, Lily Caul and her small crew just don't ever seem to get a break. So much loss, so much evil in this apocalyptic world they live in, hope to see another book soon and maybe things look in up for what she has left in this world!

if you like "the Walking Dead", you'll enjoy this book. Continuing story of characters that are not in the Walking Dead TV series. But same time frame and same part of the country. I'd start with the first in the series however. this is not a stand alone book.

Good book to get

This novel was written by a decent writer, but it is obvious he was bitten half way through the writing of this fan fiction; because it takes a nose dive at the end, as if it were – so to speak – written by a zombie.

Perfect addition to my collection.

I'm a big fan of The Walking Dead. I love every book by far of Robert Kirkman/Jay Bonansinga they are excellent writers.