Tilo

I downloaded this after reading the really good first book in her series "As the world dies" on the recommendation of a review there. But I immediately heard that the recording was of less quality than those books. I am not sure if it was just my download, but there was background static noise when she spoke and some repeats in some parts. In the second story it seemed like the narrator was speed reading. 2 seconds into the first story I thought, what a big mistake, its going to be full of the romance nonsense that I didn't like from the main series.

So I shelved this book and continued with the series until I finished it. But it does give some background info on some of the secondary characters so you may want to read this before book 2 of the series since many new characters are introduced there and it fits the time line.

The last story, Erics is what made this book really good, and its by far the main story of this book, the others were insignificant in the time spent and I don't even remember the second one. Eric is stuck with his dog in a bed and breakfast, and his girlfriend took his car and abandoned him (good riddance!). Much of the story is how he confronts the outbreak alone and isolated until all hell breaks loose and he, his dog and a girl try to make it to the fort from the main series. It has a funny part when he decides he has to save his own life and run away, leaving her behind, but he's so out of shape she catches up and runs past him!

The cover illustration is how they get stuck for weeks in a water tower with little food and almost no ammunition and then suddenly its revealed that he's carrying a "small" machete. *Facepalm*. Rhiannon Frater again reveals that her stories lack male aggression. I could have slashed all those zombie heads off while hanging from the ladder with a "small" machete. I wonder if she knows what a machete is.

So if you want to know how Lydia died, you need to get this. Hint: its NOM NOM NOM. If you're like me and don't care about lesbian love, you can get it for Erics story, its pretty good.

This was much better than the previous book, with a faster pace more action and just a better story. No where near as good as the first book though.

The RV they tried to get away in crashes and everybody separates for various reasons and horrible things happen as they try to survive the marauding zombies in the city. I'm not too keen in children in stories because they usually are just a burden and don't help out, and this story is no different. Of course they whimper and cry, attracting the hoard. Didn't mind how things turned out though.

The epilogue with George was just great, think I liked that part more than anything.

A satisfying conclusion, but I will miss Megan and Jeff and wish the author would continue with their story. Preferably minus the children unless they have helpful roles like Jason had in the first book.

I get frustrated when I have to listen to people doing stupid things in books and this is such a sharp contrast against the first book when there were just a handful of people behaving as sensibly as they can to survive.

The book picks up right off from the first book as if it was just one book, which it probably should be. At the end of book one I really thought they were in trouble and thought of all the bad things that was going to happen to them and Megan. As it turns out the group they meet isn't blood thirsty after all but led by a man who considers himself a benevolent dictator and won't let them go but forces them to survive together. So the entire book is basically about how our group try to delicately negotiate the terms of their stay the best they can within this new group.

Not bad, little cliche but the author made it rather interesting. Now the stupid bits. I don't want to listen about a 12 yr old boy sulking and his "issues". His "talking to" just went on and on and on and I just wish he went along on a scavenging run and get eaten. His childish issue just was a huge part of this book, far too big a part. Unless its a children's book, kids should be kept in the background because they are just annoying.

Then there are the two teenagers who I call Beavis and Butthead who screw around and bring ruin on the entire camp. Someone gets bit and rather than facing the reality of the situation our formerly clever Jeff wants to lug him around and after hoping he has some clever plan it turns out he doesn't and intends to die protecting someone infected.

Very difficult to listen through all the stupid things that happen and then, like the first book, abruptly ends almost mid sentence. Had pre ordered the third book already, so I'll give it a try and hope things will improve.

The story doesn't try to come up with any new angle or "twist", rather focusing on the simple issue of your average man, Jeff, trying to survive the apocalypse. He meets up with Megan and the dynamic between them is entertaining to read as it swings from affection to maniacal anger because of the insane situation they find themselves in.

Jeff is clever and I am not left thinking something is unrealistic, stupid or lame. Well, ok, maybe they shouldn't have split up those couple of times, but maybe these things are just mandatory in zombie books.

The pace may seem rather plodding as I think it takes place only over 3 days, but there is plenty happening during that time. You're even left wondering if the story will ever progress as they can't even seem to get outside of their neighbourhood.

There isn't much of a plot and few characters. They just try different things, drive one way or the other and that's the story. This is just fine because the content is just great.

Narration was good, although the gruffness in Jeffs voice seemed to change sometimes.

Never read a book with a bigger cliff hangar than this one. So yeah, this story is expensive being so short but I'm a downloading the other two books now so I figure its worth it.

At the end of the first book the characters finally met up in the finale as they scrambled to the stadium. Wow, great, I better go get book two because now the real story is going to start with a group of survivors like regular zombie books. But no. Can't say that this book is a cliche. It again starts off real slow, and soon they all split up and the book becomes a jumble of non related series of short stories. At least no more (non essential) sex scenes this time.

Great that this book tries to be different, but its really hard to beat a winning formula.

Kate is the only cool character which you want to root for, but her schizophrenic personality leaves you disappointed because she isn't what you wanted her to be. In my previous review of the first book, I wrote that she was a bit like Dexter, but that was just from a few paragraphs in the beginning. Dexter has no feelings and takes no pleasure. Kate has a lot of emotions and more. She seems to be a mesh mash of nasty craziness. I don't know what real world psychiatric profile this author is trying to copy, but I am starting to think that he is making it up. I can understand her taking revenge on men, but mindless zombies are entirely different.

I thought this book had a star with Kate, but nope, every time she is a heroine, Timothy Long has to kill the mood and turn her into a monster. Ever see a painting where you thought you could appreciate the artistic value in it, but it's still damn ugly and you'd never hang that in your house? That's how the author paints Kate, and this book.

Good piece of writing in its individual isolated parts, but the over all story is crud.

I'll check out reviews of the next book, but don't think I'll invest further in the development of this story. Certainly not after the epilogue at the end of this one.

The first half of this book was lousy, I'd give it a two. Then the second part, awesome, that's a four or even a five. Therefore the three stars for average.

First the first part; roughly half the length of the story is character introduction and background information. Hardly any zombies at all, but a ton of sex. Yeah, I was looking for zombies and I got sex. Without illustrations I'm not interested. Then there is the serial killer who reminded me of Dexter, but liked a lot of sex. So people who think zombie stories don't have enough character and interpersonal relationship depth in them, here you go, half the story is that. I just kept zoning out and had to rewind missed parts or fast forward to speed it up. Just wasn't interested in that much content on background information.

Action really picked up in the second half and if the story just blended these two parts together smoothly I think it would have worked out better, although it still didn't need that much vivid sex in it.

Gotta say it worked though because I did get attached to the characters and this being a zombie tale I'm not giving anything away when I say somebodies gotta die. So yeah, I don't appreciate having to through all that listening in the first half to have them die on me! So it upset me, didn't like it.

Narrator was pretty good, did excellent female voices but the style did feel a bit like a 1930's private detective novel. Kinda weird.

Gonna download the second book now, so yeah, this series is promising.

By the third book my opinion is probably outnumbered here, but the series was good enough for me to want to follow it trough. The series ends up being an average rated zombie tale with the twist being the strong female/alternative sexuality angle but it actually gets worse because now I have to listen about a gay male swooning over other males too. Luckily for me it just skimmed the surface and had a funny gay humor theme about it. I very much like the compound setting of the series, but it was way too comfy in this story and I hope another author picks this theme up. Or Rhiannon continues this story, but only after taking to heart my reviews :).

I didn't find the plot particularly convincing, rather cliché actually, the evil US govt wants to come in and ruin things. But it was actually just some stupid power hungry senator who had to be put in her place by Katie while Travis the man with no gonads follows like a whipped dog.

Rather than coming up with some clever plan (Like playing along until everyone moved to the fort the first, what they gonna do outnumbered?), they just go and tell the senator exactly what they want to do.

So every thing is supposed to be resolved because Katie talked tough but of course they haven't learned their lesson in leaving disgruntled people the freedom to ruin everything. Disaster strikes and someone important dies, which was actually rather sad and upsetting. Dying should be left to the "red-shirts". I found the zombie horde and ending rather anti-climatic too. Not to mention the silly ghosts everywhere. Yeah, ghosts.

I just found most of the story a load of phooey and in need of some aggressive resolution and problem solving, whether it be from a male or a female character, preferably both! Too bad Nerit didn't feature more in the story.

If a 4th book comes out, I'd probably by it, muttering to myself about all the changes I would make in it.

Katie and Jenni settle into the compound in this book and the story revolves around it, how they retake the hotel and expand the "fort". Because they don't move around life is kind of comfortable. Unlike other books where survivalist compounds are often just a passing chapter, this book centers around it. The book is about how they rebuild, fight off bandits and the social and political life of the fort.

They don't have any problems with electricity, water, food or flushing toilets. I think the people on board the Carnival cruise ship Triumph had it tougher, apart from people dying, in rather stupid ways I think in this book. Everybody split up and do search and destroy missions in the hotel, which leads to needless deaths. Otherwise the action is pretty good, that Israeli Nerit is great. But then it dips into lovey dovey stuff.

The story spends seemingly even more time on girlie stuff than in the first book. Romance and ball room dancing and dresses. Its not easy to listen to these parts as they drag on. Shane comes along and ruins the partying though and now the author shows that she just doesn't understand male culture. If the author understood this she would know that Shane would not be allowed to talk the way he does and create all the problems that he does. Like the hierarchy in a pack of dogs, things would have already been settled in the first book. But the supporting male character, Travis, has no gonads and so it drags on the way it does. The author just doesn't know what to do with male characters aside from being pretty bimbos on the arms of the leading women.

This book is actually a pretty good 9 hr long zombie book, but then these annoying parts were tacked on and it became 12 hrs long. So at least I got my credits worth of zombie telling and forgot about those parts as soon as I got through them. I went on ahead and bought the third book in the series; Siege.

I'm starting to like the narrator more and more though, I think shes great.

Yes, its a bit of awkward feeling for a dude to listen to two girls swooning over a guy, but never mind, it was a bit refreshing to see things from a girls perspective and there is still a good story going on which isn't over shadowed. Still plenty of action with guns and gore. Perhaps tone it a tad down for the likely majority male listeners and give them a bone too to chew on too.

The story is about two women surviving the initial outbreak and how they eventually find their way to a survivors compound there they start retaking the city...well, at the end anyways. By far the most powerful part of the book, or perhaps any zombie book I've listened to, is the opening scene which you hear in the audio sample. That was creepy and scary. You start identifying with Jenni right away and relieved that she quickly turns out to be a helluva tough cookie despite what she went through.

I think the narrator did a great job. I don't know much about Israeli accents but it was believable to me.

The writing quality is great, makes me respond emotionally, happy parts and sad parts of the book did what they were supposed to do. Ending was kinda "meh" though.

Going to buy the second installment now.

Wow, I really thought that this book would be for me. And it is in a way, but he's talking to the already converted. I think most of us aren't cheery happy go lucky people 100% of the time.

This book spends a good amount of time debunking "feel good" motivating books and makes fun about how nonsensical they are. It has a bunch of facts and "logic" on its side but is too dry and intellectual.

I just didn't find it helpful. A half wit already knows this stuff. I'm already a cynic and critical of books like "The Secret", but at least it made me feel better when I resigned myself to being brain washed by it.

Yes, we supposed to use reason to solve our problems, we have to face reality and wishful thinking doesn't really solve any real problems and actually things can get worse if you ignore bad things creeping up on you.

Shrug, I'm still depressed. I need something to motivate me. This wasn't it.

Oh, and he talks with a lisp, or close to. Its not too bad, but he should have gotten a professional reader.