Without Warning

By: John Birmingham

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

Length: 17 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

On the eve of the U.S. invasion of Baghdad, as the world waits for war, a miles-high energy wave cordons a vast area from southern Canada to northern Mexico. In a moment, 99 percent of the U.S. population has been wiped from the face of the earth.

To fill the vacuum, heroes rise to meet the unimaginable challenges of the city of Seattle: James Kipper, chief engineer of the city of Seattle and Caitlin Monroe are on the trail of a Muslim fanatic ready to take advantage of what becomes known as The Disappearance, while General Tusk Musso and Admiral James Ritchie try desperately to keep the peace in a world gone mad with fear.

©2009 John Birmingham (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

One of the worst books I have heard/read

Would you try another book from John Birmingham and/or Tom Weiner?

The narrator was fine.

What could John Birmingham have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

I did not enjoy this book and felt very disappointed after listening to the story. The characters were shallow and unrealistic. There was no purpose to the book and there was no plot. I kept waiting for something to develop and nothing happened. It is a very flat story that tries to be exciting but fails to engage the reader.

What aspect of Tom Weiner’s performance would you have changed?

The author needs to add life to the characters, provide a plot, and provide cohesion to the various characters and scenarios being described in the book. He needs to focus on the plot line and the story line. Both appear to be missing. The author also needs to give the reader some clues as to what is happening and why. There needs to be some credible bit of realism created too. The reader needs to be able to rationalize something occurring and say "yeah, I can see how that might happen". Instead, a bunch of totally unrealistic things happen and actors in the book take highly unrealistic actions in result of the happenings in the book.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Without Warning?

- Massive nuclear exchanges on neighboring countries.- Bizarre actions of remaining U.S. military leaders and politicians

Any additional comments?

Author needs to provide some type of plausible explanation for the events that take place.

Author needs to provide cohesion between the variety of subplots and characters in the book.

Language in book is a bit over the top.

An interesting story line. The author has a limited vocabulary for expressing the emotions of his characters, so every other sentence in the book uses the "F" word in some form or other. If he could get away from that it would be a good read. I've been in the military and have never heard as many curse words out of anyone as he uses in this book.

Terrible narration!

The book sounded very interesting and worth the money. Unfortunately, I could not finish the first chapter. I found myself cringing when the narrator was speaking in the voice of a young girl.

Wanted to like it, but......

What would have made Without Warning better?

The book had an interesting first concept but it dragged on forever. Finally, couldn't take it anymore and just stopped listening about half way through.

Has Without Warning turned you off from other books in this genre?

No, but it has from this author

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Good first concept, but disappointing with all the tedious character development

I could not do it!

I have listened to and loved other books by this author. I tried twice and could not get past the first hour of this book. I can not tell you what it's about because it is narrated so horribly I could not listen. I gave the story 2 stars because I expect the story is good. Wish I would have been able to listen to it.

Meandering

My main issue with the book is that after 17 chapters, the story still hasn't gone anywhere. It's just a bunch of unconnected stories of different groups of people. The only stories I found even remotely interesting was the one with Kipper in Seattle and the one in France. If the purpose of the book is to simply chronicle the experiences of different people, then I guess it achieves it's goal. But the book doesn't have a cohesive element tying the stories together. Except the energy wave, which after 17 chapters I expected to be more prominent.

The narration was fine, but feels rushed. I had to slow the speed a bit to make the narration feel better paced.