Fortress of the Dead

by Chris Roberson

"HITLER IS GONE. PLAN Z IS DEFEATED. BUT THE DEAD STILL WALK. Jun is a deadhunter—and a damn good one. For her, patrolling Northern Italy with Sergeant Josiah and his elite squad, eradicating zombies and searching for survivors is nothing new. When the squad encounters a group of refugees being relentlessly pursued by the Dead, they uncover a new a secret Alpine Redoubt stuffed with SS and Hitler Youth, who have seemingly gained control over the Dead. The race is neutralise the Nazi menace, destroy the secret base, and stem the tide of Dead—or lose Europe to an unstoppable zombie army. World War Two is over, but the Dead War is just beginning..."

251 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 4, 2020

About the author

Chris Roberson is the co-creator with artist Michael Allred of iZombie, the basis of the hit CW television series, and the writer of several New York Times best-selling Cinderella miniseries set in the world of Bill Willingham’s Fables. He is also the co-creator of Edison Rex with artist Dennis Culver, and the co-writer of Hellboy and the B.P.R.D, Witchfinder, Rise of the Black Flame, and other titles set in the world of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy. In addition to his numerous comics projects, Roberson has written more than a dozen novels and three dozen short stories. He lives with a teenager, two cats, and far too many books in Portland, Oregon.

Reviews

[Jerry Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

While it provides some background on one character from the 4th game, for the most part, it's kind of pointless and doesn't expand the "universe" at all.
Also, the copyeditor was out sick that day, because there are a ton of errors- misspellings, incorrect words, omitted words, etc. after the 2nd half of the book that should have been caught.

[BlueSnakeReaper · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I saw that there was a book based of my favorite Zombie game franchise I ordered it faster than a bullet striking a zombie in his testicles. Sadly it didn't live up to my expectations. As someone who's a long time passionate zombie fanatic and loved playing the games within the Zombie Army franchise this book wasn't living up to my expectations. This review will contain some small Spoilers so if you are still interested in reading the book for yourself without me spilling the beans. This is your chance to turn your head somewhere else. Here we go:

The book itself is okay but some sections are waaay too long and unnecessary. Half of the book takes place in a Resistance basecamp, with barely anything happening and you focus on characters who don't have any meaningful impact on the story later at all. I was expecting to see some more variety of Villains but we didn't get to see much other than the common Zombies grunts appearing mostly, but Skeletons and Suiciders appearing much fewer. The Game series had a large variety of different classes to chose from but the writer only kept three. Wish we got to see at least the Sniper Zombie or at least the Shadow Demons who would have spiced up the story a lot more.

The book builds up the thrill and expectation that you will (or hope) to encounter some Hitler Youth still holding out in a Alpine Fortress somewhere hidden in the mountains. But they didn't appear at all which made me extremely disappointed. Since we got many iconic living villains within the game franchise like The Occultists and Baron Umbra so it would be nice to have something more fresh and new expanding the universe but unfortunately it didn't. It's far from being a bad book and I still think its alright, still a bit of a disappointed with the ending and how it was handled, not meeting the expectations that the story was building up to. I hope future writers learn from this book and continue to write more books in the future. Something the writer should keep in mind is that instead of flexing with advanced curricular words he should instead re-read his own book before publishing because it contained frequent misspellings that I wonder how it passed unchecked. Something that bothered me was how the characters kept having unlimited ammo without stopping or changing weapons. They seemed to mow down hordes of unlimited Zombies without ever running short or out of ammo anytime.

Still give it a read whenever you feel like it.

[Maya Malice · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fine, a fun prequel to Zombie Army 4, and seeing the characters and how they got to where they are in the game. That said it felt like the book was mixed in its place, with weapons and zombies from the trilogy, while the characters were from ZA4. There were also spelling mistakes and inconsistencies. And as for the plot, it felt predictable, and the wrong moments seemed to be focused on a lot of the time. Overall, I don't regret reading it, but I don't think its worth going out of your way to find.

[Louis Fritz v · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let me start with I am a fan of the video game and a fan of iZombie. This work could have been better. Many chapters were going through single hallways or one single long conversation. Decent decriptions of the zombies that I was reminded of the games but just needed more depth for the length.

[Sarah Partridge · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've given it one star just to be able to write down how truly awful this book is. I've never read anything so badly written. I didn't get past page 25 - no idea what was happening as the terrible writing was too distracting. Maybe the story is good, maybe not.... Dreadful

[Kimberley Lewis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Loved the games just couldn't get into the book. And not one single testicle shot! 😂🙃 My favourite thing to do in the game!