So close. And yet…so fucking far. ( )

Holy cow, just when I think I can't be shocked anymore, Walking Dead punches me right in the guts and laughs in my face. Damn, this one was brutal. It started off a little slow, Carl has some anger issues, finds a lady friend and... "becomes a man." Maggie has some crap to deal with at her camp and Rick wrestles with his humanity. Why is he really keeping Neegan alive? Underlying this whole book is a new threat, the whisperers, and they are even creepier then you could imagine. Seriously, this is the stuff that nightmares are made of. The ending... sigh. Awful. I don't want to have to wait to see what happens in the next installment! ( )

Rick's communities are becoming well-established and smoothly running, with protected trade routes running between them. Negan is safely imprisoned, and life is looking safer, with the prospect of civilization reborn and spreading out from Rick's communities. But as always, the living prove more dangerous than the dead. Gregory carries out an assassination attempt on Maggie, who is the leader of her own community. Negan is inadvertently freed, but tries (and fails) to elicit Rick's trust by not taking advantage of it. And Rick's people run afoul of a feral group of humans, the Whisperers, who wear masks of the dead and blend with them, living off the land and killing any who encroach upon their territory. Carl falls for one of them when she is captured, and her mother, the leader, evicts her from their group.She outlines a truce agreement with Rick, but as he learns, she has resorted to brutal and grisly means to show her resoluteness. ( )

*Book source ~ Library

From Goodreads:
After Rick delivers Carl to Hilltop to start their new lives apart, a threat emerges from within the walker hordes that no one could expect. A threat that will leave readers speechless. Collects The Walking Dead #133-144.

So, Book Eleven had me going WTF at the end and Book Twelve delivers the answer. And what an answer it is. Holy shit! That’s just crazy! And crazy can be dangerous and so completely fucked up that you wonder how anyone would believe that shit. A favorite character is back and I’m happy. Negan is up to something and I’m not sure what. Some shit goes down involving Maggie. Can I just say, Wow? And Carl. *sigh* That kid causes more shit to happen, it’s ridiculous. But be prepared. A dozen people die at the end. Yes, I said a dozen. No one I truly cared about, but some of them are people that have been around for awhile. It’s totally and completely fucked up. I so cannot wait to see Rick’s reaction. Come on, Book Thirteen! ( )

2nd read: 1st read from 10/10/2015 and finished 10/12/2015 ( )