Shattered Hourglass

Day by Day Armageddon, Book 3

By: J. L. Bourne

Narrated by: Jay Snyder

Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

In a desperate bid to take back the continental United States - where hordes of undead now dominate the ravaged human population - a Navy commander leads a global mission to the heart of the pandemic. Task Force Hourglass is humanity’s final hope, and his team’s agonizing decisions could mean living one day more - or surrendering to the eternal hell that exists between life and death.

Shattered Hourglasss is the terrifying new novel in the acclaimed zombie apocalypse series.

©2012 J.L. Bourne (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

but the first two books were awesome!

Would you listen to Shattered Hourglass again? Why?

i will have to listen to shattered hourglass again because it was really hard for me to follow. i found myself starting chapters over and there was just too much going on that never went anywhere. the journal dude, i guess his name is killroy didn't have much to do with a mission he was sent to head. i didn't like the change in style from journal entries to 3rd person but i understood it, it would have been kinda hard for this guy to to write about things going on elsewhere, i understand it had to be done, but it just seems like it could have been done better. there is alot of skipping around from hotel 23 to the artic to one sub then another then oh yeh lets back up to 2 weeks after the outbreak occurs and hear what remote 6 has to say. i am going to listen to it again because i loved the first two books so much, i listened to them both half a dozen times. overall its a good book, just not as good as the last two.

Would you ever listen to anything by J. L. Bourne again?

j.l.borne rocks, i just think he might have been a little rushed this time, maybe the publishers were giving him a hard time or something. it was a little confusing at times because there was a lot going on. but i will listen to anything he writes about zombies.

What about Jay Snyder’s performance did you like?

jay snyders performance is as always great.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

lol, there arent many moments in a zombie novel that move me, i mean, a zombie didn't suddenly look at a character and not eat him because the character reminded him of his grandma, then they hug and walk off in the sunset together.

Any additional comments?

if you listened to the first two books, buy this one and listen, no matter how the story style has changed and whether i think it is rushed or not, it is the third in a series that is awesome. if you don't get it because of someone else's opinion, you are gonna wonder how it ends. besides, opinions are like, well, you know.

A Reasonable Continuation

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

Plot development in Shattered Hourglass is uneven and at times disjointed. The previous two installments in this series were well balanced. However, there is at least a measure of plot closure at the conclusion of Shattered Hourglass.

Some of the character development in this installment was disappointing. Admiral Goedelman on board the the USS Washington unnecessarily loses stature in my opinion. However, this is balanced by the development of the characters of Jan, John, and especially the protagonist's Islamic comrade-in-arms.

Have you listened to any of Jay Snyder’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Jay Snyder's performance in all three of the installments in this series is professional and quite enjoyable. This entire series benefited much from Jay's narration and storytelling abilities.

Any additional comments?

There appears to be enough material available at the conclusion of Shattered Hourglass for this series to continue. I hope Mr. Bourne will carry on.

ANOTHER WINNER IN THIS SERIES

OK just finished the 3rd book of the series. another winner. so loved the story and the way it ended. Again I love the way Jay reads a story! I totally can get into those voices in my head to sound like the people I picture. I truly enjoyed this series and hope J.L. Bourne comes up with more zombies stories for Jay to read!

Wraps the series up very well!

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

Most definatly! This is an excellent story, not easy to put down. It departs from the previous 2 books in the series but not going to the main characters journal, but this is ok and needed to move the plot along. You will not be bored!

Which scene was your favorite?

Hard to choose only one, but Hourglass's final mission inside China ranks up there!

Not as good as the first two books

Yes. This book is not written in first person format which is a bummer. However, I can understand why the author made the change. In some way, it seemed as though the author may have been in a rush to finish it, or perhaps lost his ambition/drive for the story. Regardless, I’m moving on to the remaining stories to see it through...

love this series

this book is not a let down like most series lately. just listen to it!

Great!

Fun listen.
My only criticism is that the females and children should have been voiced by females and children. Just one female for the voice cast would do wonders.
Love the book series, but the voices for the women and children were plain awful, though slightly comedic.

Entertaining Story…

I reached the end of this book & wanted to put down some words about the series, since the epilogue of this one made it seem like the series was ending.

Overall an entertaining journey, however it occasionally drifts into “right wing prepper fantasy” and cheesiness in my opinion. Bourne writes a military perspective very well & has good subject matter knowledge, so the main criticism is that the series would benefit immensely from having a narrator with a military background, because this guy would spell out things like “B.U.D.S.” and “NODS”, where actual troops just say “buds”, etc.

An amazing zombie filled ride

Love this series, an intense thrill ride. Great characters. I have read all of the authors books and he doesn’t disappoint.

An unpleasant surprise...

I knew going in that it was a different perspective than the first two books in the series... that it switched from journal entry style to typical 3rd person narration. What I didn't know was that the author would splinter the perspective between at least 3 different groups, jump from one character's head to another within the same page, and add in characters with no real purpose (i.e. the Northern station). Or... that there would be some "great conspiracy" that was just tacked on all of a sudden. Maybe it was meant to be freshly discovered by the main character? (well, that would require us knowing which was the main character I suppose - there was equal time spent inside several different characters)...

Anyway, it was a great disappointment considering book 1 was one of my top 10 zombie books and book 2 was also pretty good. This one was confused, scattered, and ended very conveniently. Oh, and I was actively put-off by the very un-subtle dig at the end when we are informed that the new society of survivors re-started the education system without that "diluted curriculum" of the pre-apocalypse: I suppose this meant that now men can learn to be men, and women can learn to service those men... (we wouldn't know for sure though, there are no female characters in this story, other than the teacher and two main characters' girlfriends, whose sole role was to weep at their deaths, and get pregnant...)

The narrator did a very good job. My only complaint is that there were section headings (I suppose in the book they are "emails") which must have looked like this: "OOOMEEGGG//X2EE//..." (and so on). So the narrator read this out loud... "o, o., o. m. e.e. g.g.g forward slash forward slash forward slash..." and so on, sometimes taking 40 seconds to finish reading it. It was intrusive, annoying to hear out loud, and lent nothing to the story. But, that's not the narrator's fault.

There is no sex, some moderate swearing and the violence is described, not shown - which makes the (apparently) intended tension/gore pretty tame. If there were another book in this series, I wouldn't read it.