The Coalition

Collected Zombie Trilogy

By: James Robert Smith

Narrated by: Allen Andrews

Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

When the dead rose to destroy the living, Ron Cutter learned to survive. While so many others died, he thrived. His life is a constant battle against the living dead. As he casts his own bullets and packs his shotgun shells, his humanity slowly melts away. Then, he encounters a lost boy and a woman searching for a place of refuge.

Can they help him recover the emotions he set aside to live? And if he does recover them, will those feelings be an asset in his struggles or a danger to him?

For the first time, the trilogy of novels are collected in one volume. As recounted by author James Robert Smith, author of The Flock.

©2015, 2019 James Robert Smith (P)2020 James Robert Smith

Along way to go

Lots of lasers of reason and was not compelling as the story evolved. It was a long walk around for an anti trump ad. It did start out with some promise though.

Dr. A

Middle of the Road

The novel started off all right with the actual start of the outbreak, but then jumped 18 months in the future. I was disappointed about that. Rather than show him struggle and develop the skills he'd need later in the story, Ron Cutter had just about everything he needed from very early on. Some of the details were a bit odd too, like the characters relying on 22s rather than higher caliber weapons for killing the zombies. Likewise, Ron's relationship with Jean was very peculiar. There was sex before it made sense. Things got better overall as the story progressed, but certain details were still odd. There was never any talk of Ron and Jean getting married, but still he considered her his wife. Well into the novel, the zombies really didn't pose much of a threat save for one incident.

The story didn't really have a distinct villain or end game that it was building towards. What villains there were didn't really put up much of a fight. There wasn't really a climax either. Everything just became too easy for the characters. While this is part of a trilogy, I felt that this particular novel ended the story enough that I really don't have a desire to continue the series.

All of that said, the writing itself was fine. The narration was excellent. I just felt that the overall story arc left something to be desired.

I see through the Author BS

The author has a fantasy of kill our President so he places it in the future and uses his first name, you are a coward, like all leftest

Unbelievably mediocre to horrible. Just pass!

So this book was free or next to it for a reason. The author.. hmmm.. immature at best. You can almost see a glint of future writing ability somewhere in book two-ish and then plop .. right out of nowhere the most beautiful, self reliant, competent woman left alive on the planet says " Oh.. hey perfect stranger who is beyond average I am sooooo hot for you I must have sex with you, right now in the middle of Zpoc" yeah that. So anyone who is a fan of the genre knows there almost always has to be one, if not multiple sex scenes that as a rule take place while covered in weeks of sweat and filth and oh yes... so much blood and guts.Yuck.. Oh and of course while running for their lives and trying to be super quiet hiding in some pantry somewhere. These books are predominantly written by men so it's a must have. This author is actually a better graphic wayyyy over descriptive.. I mean no detail too small too mention in the most lurid, lewd and crude way... porn writer. It was like someone else stepped and wrote that part. Weird, uncomfortable and not in a good way.
Then the narrator. Not as bad as some but a far cry from good. He over enunciates each sy la bol and.... takes..... so .... much ... time.... between.... words.. You get it. Like when the automated thing reads your numbers back to you and the fluid flirty voice suddenly sounds like Robbie the robot.
The final nail in the coffin that took our two star review down to zero if that were possible is this. This is fiction. Not a platform for your personal political hard on for the POTUS. You can through subtle innuendos and that isn't as big of a deal. This is well past that. Outright bashing. AND this guy on multiple occasions refers to POTUS as being 1/10 of the top 1% in regards to wealth? What about Gates, Bezos, etc etc .. they buy and sell the Trumps of this world. All in all this feels like a prepubescent version of the world throughout the book.

So exciting

I like this book and it was so exciting, and full of love, survival, the perfect Apocalyptic box set. The story was very good, the narration perfect. I would recommend this book, oh yes I would.