- Jubilee offer: spend £10 or more on any product sold by Amazon.co.uk on or before June 6 and you can buy "The Diamond Jubilee - A Classical Celebration Album" for just £2.50. Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
Kings of the Dead (Revised and Expanded)
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £4.10
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Kings of the Dead (Revised and Expanded) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £4.10, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
When the H1N1 "Swine Flu" virus mutates it begins to not only kill those who have received the vaccination, but also bring on the unthinkable: the dead reanimate. Cole Helman and his friends are not only survival experts, they've spent hours discussing and preparing for just this event and quickly head to the hills before the cities become clogged with looting and riots. But the group knows all too well that the living dead are just the beginning of their problems, and they'll eventually have to deal with the worst qualities of the living-desperation, greed, selfishness, and cruelty-in this new post-apocalyptic world. And a chance encounter at a secret military installation may reveal a conspiracy bigger than any of them had imagined... Straight out of the apocalypse comes the chronicle of one small group and their experiences with life and death, survival and loss. In a world of the living dead, is one man capable of maintaining not only his community, but his own sanity?
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Kings of the Dead by Tony Faville opens with Zombie Hunter Cole explaining how the zombie apocalypse began nearly a year prior, with the swine flu mutating into a zombie virus. This character actually acknowledges the existing zombie genre, and describes how that affected the survival preparations of his group. The story is divided up by dates, so it's easy to follow the timeline; Cole is essentially writing journal entries.
I love reading zombie novels by authors who pay attention to what the zombiephiles discuss in the realm of "What If," but when the characters are so well-prepared as Faville's, it makes for a slightly boring apocalypse scenario. The first two dozen pages didn't have much action, so I began to resent Cole for rambling about how awesome his survival group was, until he mentioned they came across some zombies that were running just as fast the survivors. In the beginning, he had made it a point to say that they were shamblers - great hook by the author, but I felt like it took too many pages to get there.
Over a few months time, Cole's group has to move their location, one of their members is displaying unusual behavior even though he does not appear to be infected, and they have reason to believe the military is actively using chemical warfare in an attempt to stop the zombie hordes. What begins as a slow trickle soon gushes into some gut-wrenching gore, and suspenseful battle scenes.
Faville has created an interesting balance between the struggle for survival, and the desire for a "normal" life, with elements of deviancy such as cannibalism. The story is filled with twists and turns, and his imagery ranges from breath-taking to repulsive. None of the gore was overdone, as is the case in some novels where it's tossed in just to shock the reader. Slow to advance, the story does evolve into a more familiar horror thriller, complete with complex character relationships, and a bloody payoff for patient readers. (And, I LOVED the reference to "The Postman.")
I'm giving Kings of the Dead by Tony Faville the full five stars, with the warning that I am only giving him four stars the next time he writes another sluggish beginning in a novel. ;p
I love reading zombie novels by authors who pay attention to what the zombiephiles discuss in the realm of "What If," but when the characters are so well-prepared as Faville's, it makes for a slightly boring apocalypse scenario. The first two dozen pages didn't have much action, so I began to resent Cole for rambling about how awesome his survival group was, until he mentioned they came across some zombies that were running just as fast the survivors. In the beginning, he had made it a point to say that they were shamblers - great hook by the author, but I felt like it took too many pages to get there.
Over a few months time, Cole's group has to move their location, one of their members is displaying unusual behavior even though he does not appear to be infected, and they have reason to believe the military is actively using chemical warfare in an attempt to stop the zombie hordes. What begins as a slow trickle soon gushes into some gut-wrenching gore, and suspenseful battle scenes.
Faville has created an interesting balance between the struggle for survival, and the desire for a "normal" life, with elements of deviancy such as cannibalism. The story is filled with twists and turns, and his imagery ranges from breath-taking to repulsive. None of the gore was overdone, as is the case in some novels where it's tossed in just to shock the reader. Slow to advance, the story does evolve into a more familiar horror thriller, complete with complex character relationships, and a bloody payoff for patient readers. (And, I LOVED the reference to "The Postman.")
I'm giving Kings of the Dead by Tony Faville the full five stars, with the warning that I am only giving him four stars the next time he writes another sluggish beginning in a novel. ;p
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
I loved this book, it's well written with a storyline that veers away from the standard zombie books, it hooks you in straight away and really is a book where you are thinking "just one more page" and before you know it you have finished it.
I love the descriptive language and style of this book, it is a very enjoyable read for zombie fans and anyone - even if you are not into zombie fiction I would recommend this book. Yes it has some standard zombie aspects but the book is not so much about zombies and the end of the world but how people (in this case a small group) deal with it and learn how to cope with things they expected and didn't expect.
Well worth reading and I cannot wait to read more from this author!
I love the descriptive language and style of this book, it is a very enjoyable read for zombie fans and anyone - even if you are not into zombie fiction I would recommend this book. Yes it has some standard zombie aspects but the book is not so much about zombies and the end of the world but how people (in this case a small group) deal with it and learn how to cope with things they expected and didn't expect.
Well worth reading and I cannot wait to read more from this author!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Kings of the Dead is written in journal form, which is a style I particularly like in zombie and post-apocalyptic books, as it tends to reveal more of the human emotion and daily struggles of the writer. There are also some entries from other characters, which add a new perspective to their situations.
The majority of Kings of the dead is written by Cole, a survivalist who, along with his wife and friends, has prepared for the worst and escaped from the cities before it all goes pear-shaped.
To begin with, I did find this book to be quite run-of-the-mill - the characters seemed a little cookie-cutter (ex Marine for example) and the action sequences a little too similar to so many other zombie books.
However, Kings of the Dead did pick up, and posed some very important questions on what would happen to an ordinary person thrown into an undead world. Characters with medical conditions find their health improving and their ability to be self sufficient, and the idea of creating `channels' around their safe-haven to ensure they only have to fight zombies a handful at a time, rather than being overrun by a horde is an interesting one that I have not come across before.
There is quite a bit of discussion over weapons which I do admit I skimmed - not because it was badly written or inaccurate, it just held little interest for me.
Kings of the Dead does delve into the darker side of the `human factor' and there are several disturbing scenes, however these are necessary to the story and show the struggle that normal human beings have maintaining their moral and ethical standards in a world falling apart.
It's not easy to write a book that stands out in a sub-genre that's experienced such fast growth and popularity but Kings of the Dead holds its own. And the ending is just that, an ending! Hurray!
The majority of Kings of the dead is written by Cole, a survivalist who, along with his wife and friends, has prepared for the worst and escaped from the cities before it all goes pear-shaped.
To begin with, I did find this book to be quite run-of-the-mill - the characters seemed a little cookie-cutter (ex Marine for example) and the action sequences a little too similar to so many other zombie books.
However, Kings of the Dead did pick up, and posed some very important questions on what would happen to an ordinary person thrown into an undead world. Characters with medical conditions find their health improving and their ability to be self sufficient, and the idea of creating `channels' around their safe-haven to ensure they only have to fight zombies a handful at a time, rather than being overrun by a horde is an interesting one that I have not come across before.
There is quite a bit of discussion over weapons which I do admit I skimmed - not because it was badly written or inaccurate, it just held little interest for me.
Kings of the Dead does delve into the darker side of the `human factor' and there are several disturbing scenes, however these are necessary to the story and show the struggle that normal human beings have maintaining their moral and ethical standards in a world falling apart.
It's not easy to write a book that stands out in a sub-genre that's experienced such fast growth and popularity but Kings of the Dead holds its own. And the ending is just that, an ending! Hurray!
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
