The Walking Dead: The Rise of the Governor is the latest of multi-platform installments in the ever-expanding saga of The Walking Dead. It’s a prose novel set in the early days of the zombie outbreak and follows Phillip Blake, his daughter Penny, and his brother Brian. They have a couple of friends with them that they lose along the way and they end up leading into the situation before we meet “The Governor” in the comics in Walking Dead #27.

I’ll be honest, I had a hard time with the beginning of this book only to find myself enjoying it by the middle. The end lost me again, though.

I was rubbed the wrong way first by the writing style. The book is written in 3rd person present tense and it just feels…off. It doesn’t read easily and doesn’t have a whole lot of suspense or finesse to it. I don’t get the impression Kirkman had a hand in the actual writing of this book, more just the story. I’ve known Robert Kirkman to be a better writer than this.

The other thing I was bored with was that the first third of the book plays out like every zombie movie I’ve ever seen and the thing that’s always made The Walking Dead stand out was that it didn’t feel like your average, every day zombie story. Like this one.

Phillip Blake, whom we know as the Governor, is on his way to Atlanta with his daughter and brother and they encounter all of the standard zombie fare. It’s not until they find another group of survivors (a pair of adult women and their father who travelled state fairs as a family musical act) and try to co-exist. The Walking Dead is always at its best when it’s exploring the compelling psychology of survivors and this middle part of the book was by far and away the standout for me.

But I read the book wanting to know how someone could become as vicious and sociopathic as The Governor and how that person would come to power and I really didn’t get that out of this book. The book ends abruptly with a rug-pull in the last couple of chapters that are as ham-fisted and preposterous as an M. Night Shyamalan film and almost feels twice as stupid. The character who eventually turns into the Governor shows nothing in his character whatsoever that he’ll become the person we love to hate in the comics series. It felt cheap and pointless and far below the quality Kirkman has proven himself capable of. (Which is really why I’m not sure he really wrote this book.)

The authors actually do a good job with developing the character’s psychology and then seem to throw it all out the window in the last ten chapters of the book in an attempt to fit it into the comic book continuity.

I really, really wanted to like this book. I’m in LOVE with this series. I read the comic and watch the show religiously.

This should have been a home run instead of a foul ball.

The book comes out Tuesday, October 11th. If you’re a fan of The Walking Dead, you’ll want to check it out for yourself, don’t take my opinion for it. You can order it from Amazon and have it the day of release. Check for it at your local comic book stores, too.