Zom-B Clans. Book eight of twelve of Darren Shan’s zombie apocalypse series. Meaning, in another year, we will know the story’s conclusion. And it had better be some ending after all these goddamn questions that have been raised!

Following on from the previous book’s cliff-hanger it’s pretty much action packed from start to finish, with a few shock moments and twists. Some questions are answered here, but others are definitely raised with the promise of them being answered when ‘the time is right’. Literally said like that too by a character. Plus there’s another cliff-hanger, and it’s a big one.

Overall, this is one of the better books in the series to date, and it does beg the question of whether the rest of the series will be just as entertaining now that we seem to have broken the whole ‘good one book, ok the next’ circle.

Though there isn’t as much gore in this one the story still commands an edge that keeps the reader entertained pretty much all the way through. This is usually from the secrets divulged or the witty banter between our heroine B and her enemies and the other Angels.

There’s a bit more character development of lesser characters in this one too. Unfortunately with some of these characters you get slightly attached to them and then Shan twists everything and, boom, you’re left reeling and wanting to hit Mr Shan for playing with your soul *shakes fist*. Or at least needing to take a breather.

Continuing on with character development, it would seem that a lot of walls have been knocked down in this one and we are allowed to start to understand some of the more elusive characters. Perhaps this is another clever ploy for Shan to allow us to sympathize with these charauntitledcters before he brutally kills them off. Or before they meet another fate entirely. Basically don’t trust or get close to any of the other characters except B… she knows as little as we do!

The best quotes from this book are:

‘…every one of them a true, rotten son or daughter of a bitch.’
‘As long as I’m able to scratch my bum, I’m happy.’
‘They’ll fire so many bullets into you that there’ll be nothing left but ash.’

It’s almost like this book is the calm before the storm, setting up characters ready to be knocked down in due course and giving us a few more answers as well as raising more questions. And no doubt these questions will have the most jaw-dropping answers of them all. With this being one of the better books in the series, one can only hope that the next four follow by example.

8.4/10