No Easy Hope

Surviving the Dead, Volume 1

By: James N. Cook

Narrated by: Guy Williams

Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

Eric Riordan was once a wealthy man leading a comfortable, easy life. Until one day Gabriel, his oldest friend, Marine Corps veteran, and a former mercenary, told him how the world was going to end.

He did his best to prepare. He thought he was ready for anything.

He was wrong.

As the dead rise up to devour the living, one man finds himself struggling to survive in the ruins of a shattered world. Alone, isolated, and facing starvation, his only chance is to flee to the Appalachians and join forces with Gabriel. But the journey will not be easy, and along the way his humanity, his will to live, and his very soul will be tested.

This is the beginning. This is his story.

©2011 James N Cook (P)2013 James N Cook

Above average in zombie genre

This writer does a good job with his material, "shows more than tells". The characters are well developed, likeable and the banter and dialog is nicely done. I have found that as with most 'end of the world as we know it' works the first half of the book is exciting and moves well, then as the situation becomes static, i.e. we are surrounded by zombies, the day to day living becomes boring, as most life is. Anyway this book does suffer a bit from this, although not as much as others. The lead character and how he was led into the prepper world is well done, the crisis of the re-animation outbreak is well done then as we move into the last part of the book the author looses a bit of the momentum he was able to build and when the ending comes you are fine with the book being over. That said it is a good read if you are into zombie stories it is in the upper end of that class.
Recommended if you like the genre.

Good Read

Pretty good! Yeah I liked it. Not as good as the remaining series, but definitely want to continue the series so far.
The only thing I didn't like was the narrator's voice for the character Justin. He makes Justin sound like Keanu Reeves if he was under the influence of drugs. LOL, it's pretty irritating. Other than that, I liked it.

Great First Book to an Exciting Apocalyptic Series

After the first book, I cannot wait to start the 2nd book. This is an exciting Zombie Apocalypse book series and it is an adventure. In comparison, this series is on par with Mark Tufo Zombie Fallout series & also D.J. Molles The Remaining series.

I actually prefer Surviving the Dead series than Zombie Fallout by Tufo. So far, it is a toss up between this series and The Remaining by D.J. Molles. Both series are interesting & exciting in their own way.

If you enjoy an adventurous zombie apocalypse type series, I would highly recommend this series because it is entertaining in so many ways.

Epic zombie novel.

James Cook helps set the standard for zombie novels, which are my guilty pleasure. I've read all kinds from all sorts of different authors but the tale that James Cook begins here and takes through several continuing books is a step up. They are all worth the purchase. I believe I've been through each of them at least a few times now. The narration is pretty excellent too. You won't be dissatisfied.

loved it

easy to follow. good story line and characters. looking forward to listening to the next book.

Surviving the Dead

I enjoyed everything about this Audio book. So glad this series was suggested by a Facebook friend.

Not bad, Not unique, but well written!

The book is very well written. The characters, dialogue, behaviors, and other elements are believeable not remarkable. The character is a everyday joe who befriends a survivalist type character (pre-apocalypse). The outbreak occurs creating Romero type Zombies. The main character begins his journey to meet up with his survivalist friend. The real journey is the discovery and growth the character endures while meeting other good and bad survivalist. When I first started to listen to the book I immediately thought that this was a "guy" book due to the long drawn out references toward guns, fighting, and other "manly" type interests. As the book went on I found myself engulfed in all the characters and thought to myself how well written this story really was. It became hard to put down. Just wish there were a little more action involving Zombies.

Narration was good but the female voices were a bit comical.

Starting second book now!

Solid Zombie Tale

A pretty standard tale but though the story's kind of old hat to someone who likes zombie fiction, the characters are well fleshed out despite being mostly well-worn and typical.

Surprisingly, there are a couple of pretty emotional moments, especially towards the end of the story, as the author makes a point of dwelling on cause and effect. He makes a decent stab of putting some real pathos in to proceedings and, more often than not, does a good job of it. In that way, this is a cut well above the average.

Biggest obstacle I have is the narrator who does take some getting used to. Male voices are either slow, deep and gravelly or fast, a bit squeaky and bland. Aside from stereotypes like the duuuude surfer voice, that's about as varied as things get. Female voices aren't that great either. But you get used to it well enough and once you do it rarely intrudes.

All in all, you could do a lot worse than give this a spin. I'm off to grab book 2 anyway, which gives you some idea of how much I enjoyed book 1.

Great listen

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Very interesting, I am always more interested in how people survive during an outbreak by preparation and the early parts of the out break and less interested once the living humans turn out to be the bad guys, this shows Gabriel and Erics prep although more detail would have been great (still good), and Eric meets some good people on the way to Gabe which is not always the case in zombie apocalypse books, I loved it

Who was your favorite character and why?

Eric, Gabe and Ethan were all good

Which character – as performed by Guy Williams – was your favorite?

Eric

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

yes

Any additional comments?

This and the first day by day Armageddon have been my favorite zombie apocalypse books

At last a good survivalist zombie book !

In the style of the best zombie stories(d.j molles,j.l bourne and others) still a realistic survavilist story (even though about zombies) interesting new concepts,pretty decent narrator,finished it in two days!