The End Has Come and Gone by Mark Tufo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
“I know my imagination can be like a three-year-old on Red Bull and still I feed it.”
I think this series has now jumped the shark.
Or maybe it did that with the prequel that was tucked in between books 3 and 4, which I panned in a recent review. I think the story could have been tied up neatly with a trio of books, or at most – with this fourth. At this point I’m more than a little burned out and the story is starting to seriously drag.
The pros? Less vile, disgusting stuff. Or maybe I’m just used to it now. At any rate, the puking (the actual puking in the book, which I complained about the volume thereof in book three) seems to have died down a little. The fart and poop jokes are still there, but seem less constant. There are a few new characters, one of which is a pretty cute little six year old girl that immediately warms the heart of Mike’s dad.
“Pretty lady. Why are you crying? My mom says crying makes your asscarrots run,” Angel said.”
There’s no crying in the zombie apocalypse!!
Ahem. Er, we also get to know Mike’s family a little bit more, and they’re an interesting group. It helps explain how/why Mike is the way he is, as well. There’s very little more of Tommy, and while I’m happy for any sighting, this one makes it to the cons list as well.
The cons? If you were reading this series because you adored Tommy, you can stop reading now. I hate what happened to him, and am uncertain at this point whether I’ll read further books. He was pretty much the entire reason I read this one. I also feel like what happened with him was a little gratuitous – just designed to whip up more reader frenzy against Eliza and keep people reading from a revenge angle. It didn’t work for me; my head spun off a dozen different ways they could have worked this angle while still keeping Tommy as he was – crazy poptart flavours in his magical bag of holding and all.
Additionally, the story is getting more and more preposterous with each iteration and my suspension of disbelief is seriously strained at this point. There are some real problems with repetition of situations, ways you can get trapped by zombies, ways you can get threatened by a crazy vampire, ways you can put your family in danger, ways your dog can stink up a car… haven’t we seen all this by now? The “new” material in this book is probably stuff that could have covered a 35 page “afterword” in the last book. It’s just getting a bit tedious.
While I still enjoy the Talbot family in general (Tracy, the wife, in particular) and am curious about their fate, it’s all getting a bit stale by now. I like the author’s sense of humour, and his follow-through with getting this many books on a topic written and published – which is why it gets three stars from me. Die-hard zombie fans will still like this one. People looking for a little more meat on their story bones, even with zombie stories, might be disappointed here.