A review by cassidylynnereads
Search and Destroy by Jay Bonansinga, Robert Kirkman

2.0

I'm pretty ticked now because I was in the middle of writing a very thorough review of this book when I accidentally clicked away from the page and the whole thing got deleted. If Goodreads allowed half-star ratings, I would've given this book a 2.5 out of 5. Let me just say that this book was my least favorite in the series. The pacing felt off from beginning to end, the continuity was completely nonexistent, and there really wasn't much of a significant plot. Everything just felt so forced and there were so many loose ends at the end of the book that weren't tied up. So many scenes happened that were essentially pointless. The characters could have been completely different people from the other books, if only their names and basic descriptions were changed. Don't get me wrong, I adore every installment in The Walking Dead series, from the show and it's spinoff, to the comics, and even to the video games, but this book could have remained unpublished and nothing major about the series would have changed, besides a few meaningless deaths. I wasn't a huge fan of the Jeremiah Garlitz storyline because it felt dragged out, but at least I was satisfied with how that part of the series wrapped up, unlike the storyline of this book. With all of that said, I will now be moving into my thoughts on this book that include spoilers.

Spoiler

Let's start off with my issues on the pacing of the book. I know that the whole beginning of the book was devoted to padding the one year time skip between this book and the previous one, and developing the reconstruction of the railroad tracks, but it just felt super slow and boring. Even once Lilly and her group got on the train to pursue Bryce's men the book still dragged for me. The nonstop action didn't hold my attention because there was so much disaster that it just felt redundant. Even once we get into the major action scenes the plot goes from exciting, rapidfire action, to slow and boring. Moving on from that, I felt that so many things that happened in this book were needless. The entire boring beginning developing the work they were doing on the train tracks was only there to allow Lilly's group to chase after Bryce using the rails, but once the tracks collapsed and the train was left behind it was never revisited and had no impact on the plot at all. The way Miles was described also bothered me. The book just keeps lingering on his actions before the apocalypse and continually reduces him to a simple car thief instead of focusing on his contributions to the group or his relationship with Norma. I know Lilly's group couldn't have known that Bryce and his men were waiting to whisk them out of danger, but Miles's death was so unnecessary, and even Jinx's death felt more emotional. They could have at least waited the horde out a little while longer, but instead he just let himself get consumed. Speaking of Jinx's death, she was my favorite character in the whole book, so losing her so soon was a bit upsetting. Another major thing that bothered me about this book was how the characters were suddenly completely different. I understand that it's normal to make a few mistakes between books, but as early as page seven there is a major mistake when Lilly mentions the baby she almost had with Josh, when in fact the baby was Austin's. The author can remember the small detail that Lilly's uncle was once mentioned as having a heart attack, but he can't remember who the father of Lilly's child was. Tommy was another character that completely changed. The brutal little survivor who killed his own father to save Lilly suddenly became a moral elitist wimp. He is so distraught about killing a complete stranger who nearly strangled Lilly to death that he could barely speak, but he killed his own father in previous books to save Lilly and didn't seem nearly as bothered. I also wanted to note that the wiki says he previously told Barbara that he was an atheist, but in this book he is aghast that Lilly doesn't believe in God. Norma also seemed completely different. Her sassy spark doesn't show until the very end of the book, she barely flinches after Miles dies, even though she mentions in previous books that he was the person who completely rekindled her faith in men, and she's described as being a lot older than I imagined her in previous books. The wiki also says she's in her twenties, but perhaps that was just a misconception on the part of us readers. I also had so many issues with the plot. I know Nalls is later revealed to be criminally insane, but I would expect that at least one of Bryce's men would realize that trading Lilly for all of the children who had the purest samples wasn't a very smart move. In fact, Nalls's whole operation is extremely vague and had me lost as to what he was trying to accomplish. I know this was written off by the fact that he was insane, but I feel like everyone risking their lives for him would ask more questions about what he was doing. I was also confused as to why Bryce shot Cooper at the end, but maybe that was my own fault for not being able to follow the plot well enough. I felt like it was kind of a cop out to have Lilly passed out for six months while Nalls does whatever he was doing to her. The hospital was so promising, and I feel like it could have added so much to the plot, but instead it just ended up overrun after six months of missed action. I also find it really convenient that Tommy knew to look up Megan in the phone book when I don't think he was even in Woodbury when she was still around. It also made me really mad that nobody cares about David and they're all fine with leaving him behind. I feel like even Tommy would argue against this since he had such a problem with leaving Norma behind. It'd also be nice to know what the heck happened to the other communities around Woodbury. I didn't despise this book, but I feel like it lacked any direction and it made me upset that so many mistakes about the characters were made. I feel like this series could have been left where it was and it would have been fine.