Northern Europe, 976 AD. Bjolf and the viking crew of the ship Hrafn flee up an unknown river after a bitter battle, only to find themselves in a bleak land of pestilence. The dead don’t lie down, but become draugr – the undead – returning to feed on the flesh of their kin. Terrible stories are told of a dark castle in a hidden fjord, and of black ships that come raiding with invincible draugr berserkers. And no sooner has Bjolf resolved to leave, than the black ships appear. Now stranded, his men cursed by the contagion of walking death, Bjolf has once choice: fight his way through a forest teeming with zombies, invade the castle and find the secret of the horrific condition – or submit to an eternity of shambling, soulless undeath! Mrs Cheesecake can confirm that I have a slight obsession with the idea of zombies, the concept freaks me out, yet I find myself regularly drawn to reading about them. Over the last couple of years, I have read a fair number of zombie related novels but somehow, and I’m not quite sure how, I managed to totally miss the Tomes of the Dead series by Abaddon…