Rise Again

A Zombie Thriller

By: Ben Tripp

Narrated by: Kirsten Potter

Length: 16 hrs

Publisher's summary

Forest Peak, California. Fourth of July. Sheriff Danielle Adelman, a troubled war veteran, thinks she has all the problems she can handle in this all-American town after her kid sister runs away from home. But when a disease-stricken horde of panicked refugees fleeing the fall of Los Angeles swarms her small mountain community, Danny realizes her problems have only just begun—starting with what might very well be the end of the world. Danny thought she had seen humanity at its worst in war-torn Iraq, but nothing could prepare her for the remorseless struggle to survive in a dying world being overrun by the reanimated dead and men turned monster. Obsessed with finding her missing sister against all odds, Danny’s epic and dangerous journey across the California desert will challenge her spirit... and bring her to the precipice of sanity itself.

Filled with adventurous human drama—and shocking inhuman horror—Rise Again marks a vivid and powerful fiction debut.

©2011 Ben Tripp (P)2012 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Danny's journey through a land of death to find [her sister] Kelley makes for a remarkable character-driven story, and the final sentence takes it to another level." ( Library Journal)

A gruesome and tragic zombie survival story

Rise Again: A Zombie Thriller is a modern novel about a zombie plague spreadig across the land.

Set mainly in California and Nevada, I appreciated the numerous descriptions of terrain, flora and fauna, urban and rural buildings, roadways, and masses of braindead uncommunicative zombies travelling about. The author seemed to have a knack for describing mundane details in way as to make the details less mundane and more part of the action of each scene. Certainly, any way to render entertaining and interesting the everyday things that are seen thousands to millions of times could make the world a more scenic place, and story settings more developed.

The characters were fairly stereotypical propaganda types from modern society, and the plotline was violent and grotesque. Although the action and scenarios the characters found themselves in were far from average. Battles for survival during economic scarcity, struggles against hungry herds of monsters, and group dynamics of betrayal and thievery made for very thoughtful character interactions. Unlike many of the happy main character stories, these characters were often wounded, shot, blown up, eaten, and otherwise mutilated.

It's a 4.5-star, so I rounded up

I would have given this book 5-stars across the board, but it was such a slow and soft start to the book that I though I was gonna be bored during the whole book. After I got past the beginning, it picked up. I was very vested in Dani as a character. Like most of us, her mind wondered when it shouldn't, she made stupid mistakes, but she is an excellent heroine. I found myself loathing the villains and engrossed by the main characters. The action eventually became well paced and the story kept my attention. If you asked me after the first 40 minutes or so of listening, I would have told you that there is no way I'd buy the second book, but by the end, there was no way I wouldn't buy the second book. If like me, you find the beginning to be monotonous, don't give up on the book, it's worth listening to the whole thing.

Story started pretty slow but ended well worth it!

By the end of the first part I was so glad I had kept listening. The characters have a good enough back story to keep things moving until the first Zombie appeared. I was pleased that the author developed the zombie characters past the initial shuffler types into beings who gave living folks a real run for their money.

This book is well worth the listening time and I Kirsten Potter, the Narrator was excellent at providing voice to each character and there was no mistaking one charactor for another. When you hear Dani, you will know what I mean.

I really enjoyed this book and will be watching for more books by Ben Tripp.

Regards, m

Awesome Character developmen and action, okay plot

Zombie novels are a magnet for mediocre writers. There, I said it. If you don't agree, then this review probably doesn't have a lot to offer you. Still, I love the genre's potential, and this book comes the closest I've seen in a long while to realizing that potential. Rise Again spends a good while really developing Danny's character to the point that, despite the fact that she's a walking stereotype (although dark, drunk veterans with PTSD aren't usually played by women-- her only stand-out quality), I feel that I really understand and relate to her, so Tripp managed to not use her stereotype as a crutch. Good character development is insanely rare in this genre, so it was really refreshing and a very strong start to the book.

That being said, pretty much every other face you see in the book is as flat as a cutout from a magazine. Danny keeps it real and keeps you caring, but it seems like Tripp was lazy in designing his other characters so the rest have no depth. A few are sympathetic, but they're all just slightly more developed than cardboard cutouts (case in point: gay interior designer, empathetic and soft-hearted female veterinarian, a-hole lawyer).

The description, however, is magnificent throughout. Excellent prose, believable action and the avoidance of too many predictable plot developments (at least predictable by me) kept me interested to the point where I looked for housework to do just as an excuse to listen. There's a lot of gore, but it's not just a splatterhouse. Also, as a horror, it only really had one scary point for me, at the very beginning. The rest was sort of hum-drum zombie head-smashing.

So there's bad and there's good in it, but it's worth reading. I should make mention that another very refreshing thing about this book is that it's not just another thought experiment about how awesome and scary the idea of the zombie apocalypse is. The story is as it should be-- the zombies are the environment, not the main character.

The plot wasn't really that moving for me, however; Danny's character arc is decent but not earth-shattering, some people get saved from being eaten, world's still destroyed but they can start over. It's all a little canned. Rise Again does attempt to make a few statements about the nature of occupation forces like those we have in the middle east, but they're too heavy handed and that's not really what the book is about. The book is about Danny, someone who's gotten herself into a downward spiral that would probably end in death (we see the ghost of her future in Wolf, also a bit heavy handed), and the catastrophe gives her an opportunity to find the spark of purpose that might bring her some fulfillment and save her. In a word, the book is about redemption, but it's not strong enough to make you want to cry.

All in all, it was a great read. It wasn't The Road or World War Z (I know the two are in completely different leagues from one another, but I loved them both), but it was better than the rest that I've read. And I've read a LOT.

Immediately downloaded book two

Great for fans of this genre (as I am). Original. Great character development (who cares if the main character is unlikeable? It informs the plot). Great narrator. I immediately downloaded the second book, and was not disappointed with that one either.

decent well written

Good though a bit windy at times where should have moved on and other times felt I wanted more detail but it kept me entertsined. I did not like the main characters trip to SF. just when she is likable she does something totally dumb. I get the argument for why this happens but be careful when trying to establish a generally stereotype character.

Really good!

I liked this story because the characters were real. It wasn't all happiness and some of the characters that seemed very significant didn't make it. So even though they died, they were given rich descriptions so you end up liking them just to lose them. That's a little more realistic to me.

A different kind of zombie story

I kept listening because it draws you in and you want to know what's next- however, the crude, vulgar language wasn't appreciated. The author can weave a great story without all that in my opinion. (Hence the lower rating)

awesome

I thought it was very well written and was performed with excellence I really liked it.

Boring at first but worth getting into

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

I had a hard time getting into this. It took forever to get to the part where the zombies enter the story and that part was very boring. Once they did emerge it was worth the wait. I loved the evolution of the zombies in this book and for that alone am glad I read it. The last line in the book is the best.