The Infected (Book 1 of The Infected series)

By: S. Ganley

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

It began as a terrorist attack against the United States and Europe. Middle Eastern terrorist squads were infected with a virus engineered to strike at the heart of the Western world in the name of Islam and the Holy Jihad. When the virus mutated without warning, the infection took on a dimension and scale beyond any rational explanation.
Spreading across the globe like wildfire, it left millions dead in its wake.
Worse than the initial body counts are those that suffered catastrophic and irreversible brain damage.
The infected retain nothing of their former selves and instead they are reborn in an aggressive animal-like state with the sole impulse to find and kill the small handful of survivors immune to the virus.

Hunter served proudly in the Iraqi war until a sniper’s bullet cut his career short. Now back in the civilian world, he is working hard to make the adjustment from soldier to a private citizen.
Life in rural Kentucky is boring and monotonous after serving many years in the Army and traveling the world. However, overnight the world had changed and he wanted nothing more than to return to that quiet boring life.

Teaming up with a small group of survivors they flee the dangerous population centers in search of refuge in the countryside. He soon finds that the infected are not the only thing he must fear as disillusioned survivors start to see an opportunity to take advantage of the chaos and turmoil for their own selfish needs and desires. Hunter must now lead a band of civilian and military survivors to safety against impossible odds.

turning

the detailed description of how people turned into zombies was amazing and emotional. I've never read a description like this before

Starts Off Strong

So the narration is what caused me to stop a few hours in. This is my first virtual narration book. The book is written in such a way that only one person is talking, acting, thinking, or focusing at a time. Good for setting up a story and character development. When having to interact with others is where the narration lacks. There is no change in pitch or cues to differentiate between characters. I think the story would be solid with a person or multiple virtual narration.

Didn’t really hold my attention

I don’t know if it was the AI narration, or the story itself. But this book didn’t hold my attention. The AI use of nine hundred eleven in place of 911 really irked me! Another glaring issue with AI voice narration is their failure to convey proper emotion. Stating that a character yelled, or screamed, or any type of emotion is lost. 

bringing all the people to a point of meeting

well written it runs smooth well thought out loved the story. it is believable hope it does not go this way.

Virtual voice was awful

I tried to hang with this story but just couldn’t. The virtual voice has zero inflection and mispronounced so many words that I had to go back multiple times to figure out what was being said.
The story had promise but the narration killed it so I stopped mid book.
No more virtual voice narrators for me, it horrid.

predictable.. nothing unique

Virtual voice screws up many words, frustrating that people dial "nine hundred eleven" for help. Book is supposedly 1st of 3 books but 2 and 3 are not on audible. At the very end author tries to set an emotional hook where the Captain gets kissy faced with main character.

AI reader is HORRIBLE

the ai is horrible. i t just goes on and on with no inflection in the voice. Hardly and stopping between sentences, Miss pronounced words, I finally gave up. I will try to find the series yo read.

Nice take on the Zombie Apocalypse

It was a fast moving tail with enough twist to keep you guessing. The AI voice needs more inflection

The transmission part

I didn’t like the ai mispronunciation. One charter had its name so mangled it was hard to listen to.

Story is good

Narrator or AI sucked who in the world says 911 nine hundred eleven. Over all narrator sucked. But the story is good just needs another narrator.