Length:8 hrs and 33 mins

Narrated by:Jay Snyder , Khristine Hvam 

Right.  I’ve included the Publishers summary with a picture simply because I can’t be bothered explaining it myself.

This glorified the story a bit, so just quickly in my own words…  There are zombies, but in this book they’re called Ex’s for ex-humans. There are super heroes too.  Some of the superheroes have amazing abilities, but somehow still fall prey to the Ex’s.

Then there’s the 17’s  a Spanish … or at least its heavily inferred that they are of Latino origin that are basically dicks and whose goal is to control the city of LA whether there are Ex’s or not.

So how did I enjoy the book?

In short, the plot was too simple for me, and it felt like not a lot happened in the nearly 8.3 hours of book.

In truth there have been a lot of amazing Sci-fi books out recently, many that deserve more than a 5 star rating.

Ready Player One; Armada; Off to be the Wizard; We are Legion, we are Bob..  anything by Drew Hayes… so, when I see a 5 star review, I’m expecting something on that level.
There were raving reviews about this book.. but for me it just didn’t live up to that.

Also, I still have never understood why those trapped in a zombie apocalypse don’t just go hunting and remove as many zombies as possible or in this case ‘Ex’s’. If there was a zombie apocalypse in the US, then because that country has access to so many guns, it makes it perfectly plausible that this would be an option…rather than just inevitable wait to be bitten.
In this novel there are super heroes, so it’s completely plausible that they can choose this avenue.

To be fair, this book actually presents a good explanation as to why there are zombies, which is what most zombie stories fail to do.

Narration?

It was decent. But its just that the story was so-so, that I can’t really comment on the narration so much.

I think the 2 narrators did well… and would be great in some other novel… but for me, I’m guess it was the way it was written… but I wasn’t captivated enough, even with the decent narration.

Characters?

It was difficult to find commonalities between myself and any of the characters.. so I didn’t really have that much attachment to any of them… or really care about them. Which is unlike most books I’ve listened to recently.

I think it didn’t help that there wasn’t really a funny moment in the book… all the other books I’ve listened to were humorous in some way… but this… nothing.

Listen-ability?

The fact that I paused this book half-way through and started & finished a different nearly 9 hour book… (Bobiverse book 2) kind of shows the level of energy I think this book has. Which is to say, not much.
The ending fight scene was ok.. but other than that it doesn’t feel like much happened in the 8.5 hours

(Bobiverse book 2 is great by the way)

I finished this book only because I like to have a sense of accomplishment. The end of this book has a prequel to the next book.. however even that wasn’t enough to entice me.

The book isn’t fundamentally bad,… it could just be that it isn’t for me, or that I’ve listened to too many really great books recently.
It’s better than most Zombie stories, and does have a bit of intrigue in the characters, however not enough for me to really keep going with the series.  There are a another 4 books in this series by the way.. so yep, not for me.

I’m not ready to completely discount Peter Clines as an author, because the majority of reviews for his books make it seem like they’re great.

I’ve already bought ‘The Fold‘ based on these reviews.

But this book may be another one where I take up audible’s great listen guarantee.  And return it simply because it wasn’t a great listen.

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