The Walking Dead - Book 7

The Walking Dead – Book Seven by Robert Kirkman

Review by Gerti

I have been a fan of the AMC series “The Walking Dead” since it first premiered a few years ago. That said, however, I am not a fan of the graphic novel format, preferring Kirkman’s story on the screen to the bleakly colored page. But this season, where Rick Grimes and his ragged group of survivors entered Alexandria outside of Washington DC, had me too anxious to wait for the next televised episodes to find out if yet another post-apocalyptic Eden was too good to be true.

As a result, I chose to read “The Walking Dead – Books 6 & 7” in graphic novel format, hoping that I would be far enough along in the series to catch Rick’s group as they entered the zombie-free Virginia enclave. My timing was just right. It is in Book Six where the survivors I have come to know and care about approach DC. But this review is about Book Seven.

Reading “ahead” like this showed me that the little paradise that Rick and his people stumble onto does not stay one – and that is their fault to some extent. Former law enforcement officer Rick comes to find that one of the inhabitants of Alexandria is being abused by her doctor husband. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that that is the same lady that widowed Rick is attracted to. And knowing Rick as fans of the story do, it is not at all surprising that the situation between the two men comes to a head, with violence being the only solution. He is, after all, “one-strike Rick” now. There are no second chances for these people who have been living with violence and death for so long.

The other fact that is revealed in Book Seven is that the walls that looked so secure early on are much like Alexandria themselves – partially illusory – as the survivors from outside find out too late that some of the posts holding the walls up were not sunk in concrete, and therefore, likely to come down if a herd of zombies large enough pushes on them. We’ve seen the solution they try here before at the Georgia prison where the group holed up, parking trucks against the sagging walls, and therefore readers know the walls will eventually come down before the characters do.

Disaster strikes, and Rick and company try their best to fight off the un-dead interlopers, but Carl is seriously injured in the last few pages. I’m not sure what that means for the show this season. Carl has already been shot once, a few seasons ago, so perhaps they won’t shoot him again on TV. In the comic-book storyline, Rick has one arm and his baby is dead too, so the print world may be more brutal than the producers are willing to show their vast television audience. But I anxiously await both the arrival of Books 8 and 9 for me at the library, and Sunday night, so I can see what twists and turns Kirkman’s story has next.