I could not put this story down. It was well-written, with many insights and details, and the narration was very strong, especially the narrator's lowered voice rendering of the protagonist's private thoughts.

The protagonist in this story, Alex, takes his family through the harrowing experience of surviving a pandemic. Alex is more level-headed, observant and wise than everyone else except his loving CPA wife, and certainly more than the neighborhood neanderthals, those who came after the pandemic and those who were already there. The problem is that Alex is ahead of everyone else simply because in his role as a sales agent for a money-hungry pharmaceutical, he is more attuned to the need to prepare for the pandemic. His family is provisioned for over a year with food and supplies and guns locked up in the basement. In that sense, we get to see Alex as he is without facing the survival struggles of the hooligans around him. But the hooligans are reduced in their humanity simply because - they don't have what Alex has. It is a cheap contrast. We sympathize with Alex and can't stand the hooligans, but the truth is that the hooligans could be just as sympathetic as Alex if their families were protected from the pandemic and had plenty to eat, and Alex could be just as contemptible if he was not. It's not so much that the writer wants us to want the good guys to win, but that we want the "people who had more advance warning and chance to prepare" to win. But it is easy to confuse the two in this book.

The book was filled with political statements. Alex goes around in his camouflage outfits and peppers his thoughts with his war recollections, has an impressive knowledge of guns, and an impressive collection of guns. But it turns out that all but one are unregistered. He also, even preceding the pandemic, has built an impressive survivalist complex in his basement, replete with different drug samples he has squirreled away illegally in order to keep his family as healthy as possible. Against this backdrop, the story reminds us that Alex can drop tired canards on conservatives, republicans, and Fox news with the best of the polarized left.

The above are not necessarily complaints, just "mild crititiques".

This was not the formulaic survival story some reviewers claim. It is a great read/listen, a truly engrossing story.

The plot premise was OK and even timely (pandemic, etc. but the story development was too slow and plodded along with endless detail and scene description that was not remotely germane to the plot.

The book would work with a rewrite because the story premise was sound. This book was on "bargain" and I've learned that there is a reason books are placed on "bargain." I'll be cautious buying there again.

The narrator was solid - he was not the problem with this audio

I was disappointed in this purchase; the description was appealing.

The author needs to work on moving the story along and avoid getting bogged down in mundane conversations and scene descriptions in the name of attaching realism to the story. It gets boring.

I liked the timely of the book, the story did not rush and done not push too much at you. I could envisage that in an actual pandemic many of the stories in this book would or could occur and that I found made this book interesting.

A very good job, well don.

I liked the timely in this book, how the timely made the book more believable. I was never bored or felt I had Heard (read) this type before.

The author takes what could otherwise have been a great plot and destroys it with awkwardly applied liberal talking points. It's like the author tried to hide his views, but couldn't help himself when it came to certain topics. Some highlights of liberal idiocy include:
The protagonist is ex-military, so of course he has PTSD and his wife is worried he may go crazy on them.
The only other guy in the neighborhood who is reasonably prepared for a long term food shortage and has firearms is a "rabid Republican" and owns "entirely too many guns". (Which is odd, considering the protagonist has plenty).
The protagonist, who is a combat-veteran Marine, is afraid to carry a loaded shotgun, preferring to "load it if he must". Uh-huh---sure--cause there is always plenty of time to stop and load a pump action shotgun in face-to-face altercations.
The protagonist (did I mention he is supposedly a combat-veteran?) calls his AR-15 an "assault rifle".
Fox News is trashed as unreliable, but NBC has cutting edge information that undermines the official federal position on the pandemic.
The protagonist refuses to share his own food and supplies (reasonable under the circumstances) and is generally against any 'share the wealth' programs early on, but has no problem sanctioning squatters' liberation of his neighbor's homes. (Don't take my stuff, take theirs!)

The end result is a very frustratingly unbelievable story. I don't mind listening to a survival story written by liberal or anti-gun author, heck, Stephen King writes quite a few good ones. But this author does a poor job of separating his thoughts from the thoughts of his characters.

Second complaint is the useless minutia of description. We have to suffer through the exact color and type of clothes the character dons, along with the clothes he failed to choose, multiple times for no apparent reason. Also, a long dissertation on how the neighborhood has a high rate of anorexia early on in the book is a precursor to us discovering... nothing. Its like the author had a minimum word count he had to fulfill and decided to do it by adding trivial nonsense.

Lastly, the narrator was mind-numbing. I've listened to 4th graders with better reading skills. It sounds like he is reading the phone book. It is terribly annoying when you cannot tell whether a narrator is reading dialogue. This guy's voice remains completely unchanged from dialogue to non-dialogue, making it hard to figure out when the character stopped talking.

This book absolutely blew me away - completely plausible effects of a devastating pandemic infection. Great story, well-drawn characters - I love the "sub-narration" of Alex's thoughts to himself, and the narrator distinguished these very well. I absolutely could not stop listening. And, it made me want to stock up on disaster-preparedness supplies....

Characters with some human emotion. After listening to this book I downloaded, "The Stand", by Stephen King. I know that these are two very different books, but the similarities are that both books are about a flu that sweeps the nation and kills many people. As I was listening to The Stand, I was thinking about what an artist King is. His character development is second to none. The Jakarta Pandemic is very bad. Sorry Mr. Konkoly. If King gets a 5 and then it is only fair that you get a 1. No comparison.

Where is the character development and true emotion? By the way this is my first review that I have ever written and I have purchased many books. After comparing his book to others, I had to write one.

No.

I would not have cut any scenes. I would have made the characters REAL!

None

The story was extremely plausible (which I can't always say with this genre). The people were your next door neighbors (or yourself). It just shows how quickly the craziness can start (and how stupid/risky people can be) when there's a one-two punch of pandemic and food shortages.

The night they had the shootout with the crazed "neighbors" (people who had broken in and taken over a home). Loved the slow, tense build up.

Also, if you liked the movie/TV show "The Office," you'll love it when this guy's obnoxious boss gets his just desserts.

I liked his narration so much, I want to hear more from him. Just smooth and wonderful.

Pandemic Survival Tips!

Where can I buy some Tamiflu???

This book succeeded because it kept the story local - in our own neighbourhoods - and thus we could all relate to it. Alex and his family were supposed to look pretty average and normal too, but Alex - surprise, surprise - has a background just perfect for this story to ride on, with his experiences in the military in the middle east and his sales job with bio-technical company that manufactures flu drugs. Getting past the contrived characterisations, the book reads well and builds in suspense as Alex' own fears about the future grow and what the family must do to survive the perils the confront them. I enjoyed the book very much because what confronted them was quite believable without the author having to resort to unbelievable horror, zombies or such. Recommended reading, especially for those who love apocalyptic and post-apocolyptic fiction.

Insightful, realistic and entertaining.

The one family that was diligent, the one who prepares for possible chaos, becomes the 'bad guys.'

All done well!

I think this book was an excellent guide book for what could happen in a pandemic. It was well written, and captured the neighood relationships good and bad. I would recommend this book as a glimpse into what it would be like type of thing. It is not a zombie book, nor is it an end of world book. It's a book that describes the few months the country/community would have to endure in a pandemic situation. Good story, not great but good.