138. Battle of the Zombies by The Beastly Boys

Battle of the Zombies by The Beastly Boys. Illustrated by Jonny Duddle (US) - (Canada)
An Awfully Beastly Business, #5

Pages: 180
Ages: 7+
Finished: May 14, 2012
First Published: July 8, 2010
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (UK)
Genre: children, fantasy, paranormal, ghosts, zombies
Rating: 5/5


First sentence: "It was the dead of night and high in the sky a hot-air balloon was drifting through the darness.

Publisher's Summary: "In the RSPCB's most dangerous mission to date, Ulf the werewolf visits a haunted castle to investigate some very spooky goings-on. But little does he know that he's heading into a trap: the evil Baron Marackai is lying in wait with a beastly plan - and this time he's got help from the dead! Can Ulf unravel the ghostly mystery, or will he end up as zombie food? The future of the RSPCB depends on him..."

Acquired: Purchased a new copy from a British online retailer.

Reason for Reading:  Next in the series.

My son absolutely loves this series of books but as I noticed that the last two books had been printed in the UK and weren't coming out here in North America, I decided to purchase them directly from the UK instead of waiting any longer and gifted them to ds for Christmas last year.  The UK books are now available from NA retailers.  My son was first annoyed that the covers didn't match his first 4 books, but did think it was cool that these 2 have a hologram on the front.  So they took some getting used to before he warmed up to them "belonging" with the others.

Anyway, he and I loved "Battle of the Zombies"!  This is our favourite book of them all.  Everything we expected is here.  The whole cast of characters is present and accounted for and everyone gets involved in the caper, even previously second tier players who've only had cameo roles got to participate in the main adventure this time.  Ds and I never seem to get enough of Druce the Gargoyle and this time he comes along for the ride to visit with the gargoyles at the castle they are traveling to!  Lots of silly Drucey jokes.  Plenty of action and humour as we have an epic revival of middle ages warfare with ghostly knights and zombie warriors.  These books are very tame but when the topic is zombies it seems perfectly ok to add severed body parts and that extra little gruesome yet fun element.  A real winner in the series which makes us both excited to read the last book, which we already own, but a little sad that it will be the end of the series.