Breakers

Book 1

By: Edward W. Robertson

Narrated by: Ray Chase

Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

In New York, Walt Lawson is about to lose his girlfriend Vanessa. In Los Angeles, Raymond and Mia James are about to lose their house. Within days, none of it will matter. When Vanessa dies of the flu, Walt is devastated. But she isn't the last. The virus quickly kills billions, reducing New York to an open grave and LA to a chaotic wilderness of violence and fires. As Raymond and Mia hole up in an abandoned mansion, where they learn to function without electricity, running water, or neighbors, Walt begins an existential walk to LA, where Vanessa had planned to move when she left him. He expects to die along the way. Months later, a massive vessel appears above Santa Monica Bay. Walt is attacked by a crablike monstrosity in a mountain stream. The virus that ended humanity wasn't created by humans. It was inflicted from outside. The colonists who sent it are ready to finish the job - and Earth's survivors may be too few and too weak to resist.

©2012 Edward W. Robertson (P)2013 Podium Publishing

Do you have 5.95?

If you do buy this book, it's your basic post apocalypse flu scenario but, then is gets very interesting. It takes on a whole new story line mid way, and it works. Excellent depressive and or gallows humor included. Worth you time cash or credit. Enjoy!

Excellent Book 1

Would you consider the audio edition of Breakers to be better than the print version?

Audio Books are ALWAYS better than print version. Audio books improve both listening and comprehension skills. Audio books also allow the listener to become a better observer/judge of an actual or hypothetical situation. It's like the listener becomes a jurist hearing testimony versus reading a court transcript. Anyhow, I can reed and right an has nuffin to pruve.

What did you like best about this story?

Great anti-hero character; always underestimated; always prevails.

Any additional comments?

I thought it was interesting that the aliens were so loving to one another yet brutal to people. People, on the other hand, were depicted as brutal to everybody. I couldn't help thinking that the aliens would live happy, loving, lives after they killed all the people. It makes you think.

So much fun!

I just binge-heard the whole series. Except for Book 4, which you can skip, the whole thing is a lot of fun. Yes, as one reviewer pointed out, the female characters are way too similar to each other (the archetypal ninja), but who cares? It's one action packed roller coaster. More about what happens to humans when society collapses than about the cause of the collapse itself. Recommend for fans of this genre.

great end of days series

Who was your favorite character and why?

The characters are well fleshed out and it's hard to say which is my favorite. all of them are essential to the story and by the end of the book you wonder where they will show up again in the series.

Would you listen to another book narrated by Ray Chase?

he's ok, his delivery is dry and hard to get used to but once you are into the book you get used to it. It fits the book somehow.

Any additional comments?

The use of profanity in the first 2 or 3 chapters almost had me putting the book aside and not listening to the rest of it. I'm glad i stuck with it because after those initial chapters it calmed down and was pretty much gone. The gratuitous use of the F word doesnt enhance a book in my opinion

Awesome

What made the experience of listening to Breakers the most enjoyable?

This is a well written and enjoyable book. I thought it was going to be a zombie novel of some sort .

Time moves really weirdly

For an apocalyptic where the reader gets to see the devastation and destruction WHILE it is happening, this was a bit slow. Time moves really weirdly. One minute seems like forever and it is difficult to know how much time the characters go through. Months go by but there is no real indication of when or where it went.

The characters were quite brilliant though. I really enjoyed how they went about surviving. Even knowing that this is probably the apocalypse and getting their stuff together. It’s fabulous. It is also what would happen in the real world. The only downside was that it was difficult to tell the two main characters, Walt and Raymond, apart. So much so that it took me a minute when the story skipped back and forth at the beginning. This does fix itself as the story goes on, fortunately. Or maybe I just got more into the characters and could tell their own stories apart. Either way, it got better.

The narration was great for this. Ray Chase has a way of really inducing intensity into his voice. It’s entertaining and brings that intensity to portions of the plot that are not even that intense. Deep and gravelly, perfect for this type of story. Audio produciton was perfection!

I loved the pop culture references and jokes. We would all do it. It’s a huge part of reducing stress for some. That or kill other people, I guess. I’d prefer telling jokes. Sometimes they went a bit too far but I was with the story enough at that point that it did not bother me too much.

The sci fi portion threw me though. There’s a twist that I did enjoy reading, but I needed a little more. Overall it was good, but not fabulous.

Audiobook provided for review by the publisher.

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Pretty much outstanding!

What did you love best about Breakers?

A great blend of story, narration, acting , pace, the growth of characters, and throughout it all a gritty laconic take on how the average person would deal with world changing events. The use of language and descriptions are remarkable.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Breakers?

Too many to mention. Seemingly ordinary moments were shocking, extraordinary moments perversely mundane, but managed in a fluid and controlled manner that ratcheted up the tension. An ambitious story arc, that combines two Apocalypses, I was hooked from the first 5 minutes.

Which character – as performed by Ray Chase – was your favorite?

The two lead characters are both flawed, neither comes across as your GI Joe type and frankly, in pre-disaster times they would have ended up on skid row or inside a cell. I'll go with Walt as he seemed to have descended deepest into despair and climbed the furthest out. The characters start out angry, needy, manipulative, vulnerable, selfish, desperate. Events start to shape them into something else. A welcome relief from previous books of this type that portray the leads as Martial Art / Special forces McGyver super heroes.

Any additional comments?

Author and Narrator are seemingly perfectly matched. Rarely have I heard a book so well produced on Audible. Well done. Onto Book 2 - I have no idea how that will compare.

excellent PA series

Excellent. This is so well crafted - reads as well as Stephen King's books do, with his characterization, flow, and sense of place. I read a lot of post-apocalyptic novels and this one was remarkably free of cliches and other writing issues. The switches of POV between characters in a concurrent set of stories worked beautifully, and I never got lost about who was talking. The detailed world is believable - haunting and scary and emotional as only the end of the world could be. The pandemic descriptions were gut-wrenching, and the twist/explanation of what caused it came as a real surprise.

I got this as a free Kindle book and the Whispersync for very cheap and was not expecting this quality of writing. Can't wait to dive into the next few books in the series!

Good Series

Any additional comments?

I found the story took me some time to get into; 10 chapters actually. Once it did I was enthralled and listened at every opportunity. Great characters; great reader; overall very well done and I'd recommend this to my closest friends.

Great story

Finally an apocalypse novel that wasn’t all military guns and evil people. It seems in most of this genre all the good people die and only the really evil people and a few weak people remain….except of course an ex-military sniper type that tries to save all the weakling humans. It gets really old.
I appreciated this more realistic view of human nature and actual struggles that would be experienced. I have often wondered when reading this genre how 90% of the people could die and suddenly there is absolutely no food or water. Not likely. These characters for the most part found what they needed to survive and tried to build lives in the rubble around them. It was a good story and I actually finished it, despite the narrator. That usually will end a story for me very quickly. I wasn’t that into the narrator as others seem to be. He was overly dramatic and his voices made characters seem rather dumb when they weren’t.
Authors/publishers out there…..this is a VERY important part of releasing an audio book. It can make or break it.