The Dead Don't Bleed

The Outbreak

By: S. Ganley, Scott Ganley

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

“When there's no more room in hell, the dead shall walk the earth."

It started as an isolated outbreak of a mysterious illness in the wake of a minor natural disaster in central New Jersey. The first reports of illness occurred within hours of exposure, the first deaths followed a short time later but it wasn’t until the second day that the first of the dead started to rise.
By the end of the weekend the illness had burnt its way across the globe as containment efforts failed.

Garrett Newton was just about to start a new chapter in his life after a combat injury ended his military career. Instead of starting his first day of work at a new job, he found himself on the run from a zombie apocalypse ripped from the scripts of the most terrifying horror movies.
Garrett leads a band of survivors to fight their way free of population centers in the futile hope that help will eventually find them.

I do not like virtual voice narration.

The story just did not flow well. It had its moments, decent storyline but I found my mind wandering.

Close but no cigar

The premise of the story is a little strange.
I’m not sure that the author has a lot of experience( if any) with weapons and it is evident in the writing. He may have done some reading on them but it’s the fine details that ruin it. Little things that are off that the characters would/should know.

I listen to a lot of audio books at work and this one really was a tough one to get thru the first few chapters. It isn’t very engaging. Well I’m not sure that I can truly say that. I was impressed with some of the detail that went into the story. At the same time though the story did drag and I found myself getting distracted and having to rewind it and listen again.

The HUGE FAIL with this was the AI reading. The voice sounded human enough but the cadence was off in places that really hindered the flow of the story.
The editing caught some of the AI mistakes like when characters called 911. Sometimes it was read as 911 and other times it was nine hundred and eleven.

Don’t spend money on this one.

Virtual Voice review………

CONS:
The virtual voice pronounced the emergency line as Nine Hundred Eleven,instead of 9-1-1. The same with the convenience store chain 7/11

There was quite a few mispronunciation of words. Whether it was due to a misspelling in the book for lack of proofreading, or if the AI just couldn’t pronounce it correctly. These became glaringly obvious throughout the book.

The most glaring issue with virtual voice is the lack of convenience of emotion. When a character is angry, yelling, crying, or upset. All the voice nuances are the same.

PROS:

The author good did a good job with character development, and giving them all a backstory. I felt that we got to know each one individually, and I got to connect with them without their being unnecessary fluff on why they are who they are. I also like that we found out IMMEDIATELY where the virus came from. Unlike most zombie stories were it just there and we never know how it came about until 10 books in. This ended up being a good book, I’m still new to the virtual voice genre, so that’s taking some getting used to.

Good Story

This was a well thought out story. I will read more books by this author

Great story, crappy narration.

The AI narration was agony to listen to. It found all the grammatical and spelling mistakes, and there were plenty. However, the story was VERY good. No plot holes or plot armor. I recommend.