Hissers

By: Ryan C. Thomas

Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews

Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

It's the last weekend of summer break in the small town of Castor, and four teenage friends are about to attend the most popular end-of-summer high-school party in town...with a massive wave of mutated undead about to crash the party. It's The Breakfast Club meets Resident Evil as the teens of Castor fight to stay alive.

BONUS SHORT STORY: Hissers includes "Confidentiality", one of four interlocking stories from The Junkie Quatrain by Peter Clines.

©2010 Ryan C. Thomas (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Uniquely Undead!

With the overwhelming amount of undead themed books out there it was a treat to find such a unique twist to the undead chaos in Hissers. Even though this is classified as Young Adult and the main characters are 14 years old the story line is complex, characters are well developed and intriguing, and it is full of action for all ages. There is a fair amount of foul language, but it is primarily used in the development of one of the primary characters and as an appropriate response to being chased by undead creatures who are wanting to eat you while they are F%#&ing hissing.

I am a big fan of undead and apocalypse genre, but unfortunately many of the books in the genre are disappointingly predictable and sadly many of them use very similar storylines. The author does a great job of working in several unexpected moments that significantly shocked me and made the book even more entertaining. The narration by Andrews is well done and he helped further enriched the characters and story telling. If you are considering this book I highly recommend pulling the trigger and taking a chance.

Bonus info: Hissers was released in Audible on 07-26-11 and on 06-22-17 Audible just added the second book Hissers II: Death March, which is the second book of the expected trilogy. If you end up liking the first book getting the second one is a no brainier with the only major negative is that it is too short. Have FUN!

Y.A. ?

The main characters are 14. They face several problems in normal everyday life. Due to the characters and subject matter involving them you would think this to be young adult, but the gore element is tremendous. Yet to be an adult book the gore element lacked intensity. The author would be like, the guy's tongue was hanging out of the slit in his throat. I believe a better author would have made you cringe, where as here it was more matter of fact.

I liked the characters, they grew on me. They all had problems and most of them did not have perfect parents. Yet the parents were not total bad guys. In real life parents make mistakes and it is nice to see them not demonized for it.

I found myself thinking looking back 40 years to when I was 14 and about my friends then.

The author did a good job, not great, I will listen to more of his if on sale, but it is not worth full price.

You want good adult Zombies, get "Patient Zero" by Jonathan Maberry.

Fun & Fast-Paced

Ryan C. Thomas' entry into the world of zombie fiction is an inventive one. Taking the now almost routine "zombie armogeddon" theme and marrying it to a highly-relatable story about teenagers adds an additional level of familiarity to the story.
I was initially turned off by the disclaimer mentioning "The Breakfast Club" as I took that to mean the story would be childish and silly (beyond the zombie premise, I mean). With the exception of a few regrettable developments, the story is fairly smart and enjoyable for adult fans of this kind of fiction. The story occasionally gets angsty, but never overly sentimental.
The scenes involving the military (particularly the beginning and the end) are the weakest elements of the story, but don't overly detract from what largely a quick, enjoyable read.
I liked the new twists offered on the living dead.

Best book ever!

This is by far the best book i have ever listened too. Granted, i'm somewhat of new in the book universe, but non the less, i think most people will enjoy this one. I find myself really getting emotionally involved with the characters in this story.

A must for zombie lovers!

If you like 60's Monster Movies, you'll love this

The story is great, the characters are memorable and fun to follow, the dialogue unfortunately suffers, but overall a really fun listen.

Easy listen

Very straight-forward, easy to listen. Though not very deep, the story is entertaining and I finished the book quite quickly.

The narrator was good too. Nothing to complain.

shockingly good

I bought this on a whim. It was cheap, and I had some credit that needed spending. I do like a good horror story, but have found so many "stinkers" in that genre lately that I have all but given up. This one was really fun, and even though not anything really new, it was a different take on the whole "canibal/zombie" kind-of monster. The characters were believable, and well developed, with great backstory points that didn't seem forced. I would recommend it to any horror fan, even if you usually stay away from YA fiction (which I assume this falls into only because the main characters are 14).

Good Zombie Fun

Loved this one. As I've said in another review, I'm not usually all that interested in zombie stories, but after reading a few good ones this month, I may have to revise my thoughts on the genre. This one started out as seemingly a young adult story, but as the zombie presence grew in the story, it quickly intensified to a true adult horror book. The characters were all quite well built, and as an author, I couldn't help but to take character-building notes from Mr. Thomas, as the four main-characters all had their flaws and heroic points to make them quite likable. The story is quite bloody and violently graphic, but that's to be expected from a tale of zombies. These aren't the old, slow-moving variety, but fast-moving and evolving creatures, which means no one is ever safe. If you're looking for a good zombie book, or a horror story in general, give this one a look.

As for the narration, I think the narrator did a great job of changing up his natural voice to give the characters distinct sounds, especially the four teens. They weren't much different from one another, but different enough that I rarely needed the voice tag to tell who was speaking. I always like that.

One final thing about this that I enjoyed: There was a short story on the end, and it, too, proved to be a pretty neat zombie story. It had a neat twist (which I, of course, won't spoil for you), and an interesting premise all the way through. So after you finish listening to Hissers, listen to the final hour of the recording to hear this story.

Attention/edge of the seat grabber

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

Absolutely..so detail

Who was your favorite character and why?

Seth and Conner...Very bold willing to fight it out and only 14 years old

What about Macleod Andrews’s performance did you like?

Well it was llike he was there and put his soul into making the characters come alive.. awesome

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes most certain.

Any additional comments?

Will there be a movie coming out?

Great for kids, so so for adults

A plane with the zombie virus on board crashes and rapidly infects the town of castor, with new zombies rising seconds after death. These are fast zombies and the twist here is that the zombies can attach limbs of their victims on themselves. Thats not as silly as it sounds and there is a background reason to why and neither does it play a large part in the story.

The story plays out from the perspective of 4 14 year olds, Connor, his fat side kick Seth, Nicole and her slutty friend Amanita. If you are around that age, this is the zombie book for you and you can add on two extra stars to this review.

For adults, there isn't much to relate to since they are kids and the few adults in the book are otherwise disconnected from the reality of the unreal situation and very brief in appearance. The slow parts in the story are like the slow parts in regular stories but the character development segments can be difficult to bear when it deals with teen age anxiety or even awkward when you listen in on their sexual thought processes. All the same, the kids are fairly mature and make just a few stupid decisions.

Being kids they first try to get home to their parents, then they try to drive out this way, then that way then the military wants to firebomb the place. The story is a lot of trying to escape and not about scavenging or planning other ways to survive.

Its a great book, but I would rather have had adult characters. The end is set up to continue although I couldn't google any indication it will. Should it do so I would be tempted to pick it up as the "kids" have so matured I don't think of them as such anymore although being a certain age will set limits on what they can do.