Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead: Descent (The Walking Dead Series, 5)

Fans of the graphic novels, comics, and T.V. show on AMC will love this book series, no matter how bad it is. This series starts out good but deteriorates quickly. Repetitive and trife. 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

If you are not concerned with how firearms actually work, then this is a 4/5 star story line due to:Pros: good story line and character developmentIf you are even somewhat knowledgeable about firearms, then you may find, as I did, the following:Cons: author prominently features firearms, yet clearly has little to no understanding of said firearms.Normally, I don't expect exact knowledge of a subject and try to not be "nit picky" about it, particularly when reading sci-fi or fantasy. What is frustrating is when there are (what I consider) egregious oversights or misinformation repeatedly and frequently written into the story as is the case here. The characters pop "clips" out, carry 22 pistols with 25 round mags and/or clips, repeatedly thumb back hammers on semi-autos, attach silencers to revolvers, etc.

***WARNING***SPOILERS AHEAD***In this fifth book in The Walking Dead series of novels, Philip Blake is now entirely out of the picture (zombie fodder, in fact) and Lilly Caul has been voted in as Woodbury's new leader, democracy and all that. Lilly has lost her true love (cough and a wink), Austin Ballard, who sacrificed his life to save Lilly and other folks of Woodbury. But don't cry for Lilly, because the third time is a charm as she now has the hots for another man in town, Calvin, a newcomer that loses his wife, also from a sacrificial act to save the town of Woodbury. I guess in an apocalyptic world you latch on to whomever you can. I was kind of on the fence as to whether or not I liked Lilly, but as soon as I got to the part where she and her new beau start pining for one another, I decided I didn't care what happens to her. There's a part of the book that reads "Was Austin Ballard the only man Lilly had ever truly loved?" Apparently not. New characters are introduced. One in particular, Reverend Jeremiah, is not so Godly as one might expect. Of course, this doesn't end well, so there has to be another book in the making...right?

After reading the 5th book in this series, my dislike for the protagonist, Lillie, has been ever increasing...snowballing if you will. At the beginning, her character was grudgingly acceptable but over time she continuously makes bad decisions, gets her friends and lovers killed, eye rolls her good friend's sage advice, and picks up a new man every other week... Each conquest being wholly different than the last. I don't even know why I will probably read the next book, but I probably will. I suppose I like good ole Bob, the good ole friend, and wonder if he will make it. Maybe I'm also hoping that despicable Lillie won't.

Bob aims to surprise!!! What an AMAZING yet horrible way to leave it!!! If the ending was read the Rev. has much to reprise, however weak..... The people of Woodbury (mainly Lilly and Bob) have much to kick ass... I don't like this book cause it makes Lilly look weak!!! Which she is NOT.. Everyone has fought their inner demon (Lilly with loved ones mostly).. Survival is a primal instinct...

Thoroughly enjoyed this book! This book just as with the other novels in the series is well written and very descriptive. I could easily visualize everything that is going on. One of the best book series I have read in a very long time. And as a super fan of The Walking Dead I knew I had to get my hands on the novels. This book was very difficult to put down once I had started, as with the others. Even if you're not a fan of The Walking Dead, but a fan of zombies in general, I would recommend that you read this series of novels.This book had quite a few twists and turns. Not going to give away any spoilers, but you will be surprised and shocked by some of the events taking place. Such a great read!