Started watching last summer and while I'm tired of vampires and maybe a little less so of zombies, at least thus far the story line has been good. No, I never read the book(s). No spoiler alert, but I like the scientific approach (it was killed off very soon in The Walking Dead when CDC was destroyed in S1) in infecting the infected along with the historical flashbacks/backstory, and now more recently coupled with the other vampires looking for the Master (and want to kidnap Eldridge).