I picked up this book to get a fix that The Walking Dead gives me and have to say I wasn’t fully into it in the first half. It was slow going and Higson is straight up ruthless when it comes to killing characters. I was left thinking, how can I ever grow to love these characters if he’s killing them off so rapidly? However, he had me in the second half. Once the Jester showed up I was suspicious, but when they made it to the palace? I KNEW shit was about to go down. And boy did it go down. I am invested in this 7 book series. Even with the rapid annihilation of his mains, I am invested in them and their development. Higson does a great job of making you love someone in a short time. And he is so realistic in his representation of kids surviving in a zombie apocalypse. There’s bad kids, good kids, dead kids. Tough and weak, smart and dumb, younger and older. He really has a great cast of characters here. Even the minor ones I love and root for. This is certainly a series I will continue to read. UNLESS he does my girl Maxie and my boy Blue dirty. Then we might have to fight. I also want to commend him on making his zombie adults not completely mindless. They do have some semblance of brain capacity left and that makes for more interesting fights between them and the kids. And that last chapter from the POV of one of them? That was a great idea. It truly hooked me on for at least the next book.