The First Days

As the World Dies, Book 1

By: Rhiannon Frater

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Rhiannon Frater's As the World Dies trilogy is an Internet sensation. The first two books, The First Days and Fighting to Survive, have won the Dead Letter Award for Best Novel from Mail Order Zombie. The First Days was named one of the Best Zombie Books of the Decade by the Harrisburg Book Examiner. And AmericanHorrorBlog calls Rhiannon Frater "a writer to watch".

The morning that the world ends, Katie is getting ready for court and housewife Jenni is taking care of her family. Less than two hours later, they are fleeing for their lives from a zombie horde. Thrown together by circumstance, Jenni and Katie become a powerful zombie-killing partnership, mowing down zombies as they rescue Jenni's stepson, Jason, from an infected campground. They find sanctuary in a tiny, roughly fortified Texas town. There Jenni and Katie find they are both attracted to Travis, leader of the survivors; and the refugees must slaughter people they know, who have returned in zombie form.

Fast-paced and exciting, filled with characters who grab your heart, The First Days: As the World Dies is the beginning of a frightening trilogy.

©2008, 2011 Rhiannon Frater (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"One of the few zombie novels fueled by the power of feminine protagonists in an apocalyptic world gone wrong." ( Harrisburg Book Examiner)

Female Bonding + Zombies

This was your standard survival against Zombies book. The "spin" was the relationship between the two female characters which would have been waaaay more interesting if things had gone where I thought they were going. (Trying not to give anything away here.) I'm debating on the second book - which may be promising as we are going to be introduced to raiders as well as the ongoing fight against zombies. Overall, it's a typical zombie book that I would score right in the middle. Worth a credit only if you've read everything else.

Action packed zombie novel...

This one is a tough book to rate for me. My average time to listen to an audio book is about a week, give or take. This book took me about a month! I found that I didn’t want to listen to it at times and almost forced myself to listen just to move on, hoping it will get better. I’m truly not sure if it’s the book itself that didn’t impress me or the audio book narrator. I want to say a little of both. I really didn’t care too much for this book until after the halfway point.
Don’t get me wrong, this book has all the elements of a good zombie action book. Emotions were high as the world as they know it began falling apart. The undead zombies were everywhere. The survivors became refugees and unfortunately the survivors were few and far in between.

The zombies were described in great detail. They were certainly exactly what I would expect zombies to be like, nothing unexpected. There was tons of action between killing zombies and running away from zombies. There was heroic saves of survivors and horrible deaths. Rhiannon Frater did not shy away from the gruesomeness of zombies, which I did enjoy! She described their moans and screams while trying to eat people. She also didn’t shy away from how the zombies died when killed. They were run over, they were shot, they were crushed, they were smashed to death, all in great GORY detail!!!

The characters might be where I had the problems, like I said towards the end they grew on me and the book as a whole did. Jenni and Katie, the main characters, are the “Thelma and Louise” girls. Jenni was definitely a “Loca” like Juan describes her as. Katie is stronger but equally crazy. Jenni and Katie meet lots of others in the fort, their make shift sanctuary. Travis is one among them. I don’t really like him that much, not sure why. Maybe because he doesn’t want to shoot zombies, he tries to be TOO PC, or maybe because he has insta-love with Katie. I don’t know. I seem to like Juan, the Mexican American more. Juan is the only reader of the Zombie Survivors Guide, LOL and a great source of jokes amidst all the chaos. There are several other characters like I enjoyed like Nerit.

I’m disappointed that right when I started to REALLY get into this book, it ENDED!!!

Typical zombie read...

I have had this book for a while to read and was excited to finally get to read it. This was part of the bunch of books I got when I was in a huge zombie reading phase a few years ago. This ended up being a pretty typical zombie book. This book details the first days of a zombie outbreak and two women who struggle to survive it.

I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was well done. It wasn’t outstanding but it wasn’t bad either.

My main complaint about this book is that after the initial rush and struggle to survive the book gets very soap operaish. There is a ton of drama about which characters are hooking up with which other characters. Of course then there is jealousy over this and infighting. I would have rather heard more about the survival aspects and the understanding behind why this zombie plague happened.

This book doesn’t explore the “why” behind the zombie attacks at all. I found that frustrating, but I assume that will be covered in future books. Towards the end of this book they start to address roving bands of brigands and thieves who are attacking the region. It becomes clear that other humans, rather than the zombies, are becoming the focus of the story.

This book is very brutal and gory and doesn’t pull any punches. If you don’t like reading about gore and brutality I would stay away.

Overall this was an okay read that is pretty standard zombie fare. I wish the book had focused less on human relationship drama and more on survival and the why behind the attacks. By the end of the book I was kind of bored with it all. I don’t plan on continuing the series.

Good on the verge of great

Would you listen to The First Days again? Why?

Probably would. It sets a pretty good pace in the opening.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The First Days?

The description of the main character's family turning into Zombies and her infant son's fingers clawing at the door crack.

What about Cassandra Campbell’s performance did you like?

Great narration and worked well since the main characters are female

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

no

Amazing!

The bond between the two main characters was deep and amazing. You hardly ever read about female friendships in zombie novels, so I enjoy that aspect of the story. The book took a lot of twist and turns...as a writer, I hope I can create a story on this level

characters not well defined... couldn't tell the

characters not well defined...
couldn't tell who was whom
not much zombie action.
more like a romance

I really like this series but

The characters annoy me at times. Specifically Jenny. Her whining over Katie is so obnoxious I found myself yelling at the audiobook. Katie was almost as bad with her constant "Lydia Lydia" I can imagine how hard it must have been but the incessant whining hovered on the brink of so much it almost resulted in a loss of interest in the book. However I did enjoy this story line and which did keep me interested.

Very Good Book And Narrator.

It's really good. Much like other zombie apocalypse but better and different to. Try it! Can't wait for book 2.

I'd pick another series...

The names of the first two characters starts the story off confusingly - Katie and Jenny - and it went downhill from there. And I'm not convinced the author kept the characters straight either: it felt like sometimes Jenny was the hysterical useless twit, and at others it was Katie. Unless both women were supposed to be hysterical twits?? perhaps...

Jenny is an abused wife, but this felt like a feminism 101 version of spousal abuse. Jenny recollects how she was planning to leave her hubby, then a few pages later, she goes on about what a terrible wife and mother she was, and how much she needed a "strong" person (aka Katie) to follow. It's like the author read a book about how abused women behaved, and tried to incorporate this into the book. Including a moment where Jenny was going to "pay back" Katie by offering her sex. It didn't feel real - especially since I'm pretty sure women don't turn lesbian in a matter of a few hours.

And Katie says when offered the opportunity to join an armed group: "I think we're better off on our own"??? are you nuts? Yeah, sure... a couple of people against the world - it's even irrelevant that they are both women... nobody wants to face a zombie apocalypse with just one other person at their back. (Of course, the next day, they're all gung-ho to join a group...the reader is not told what stimulated this sudden change of mind.)

Then when they finally find a place where they think they'll settle down to stay (the author - I mean Katie - tells us directly that they want to stay here)... all of a sudden Katie (a lesbian) realizes that she has felt a connection and "feeling that they have a future together" with a man she met 30 seconds ago. Err... I'm not clear if this is meant to show that lesbians turn straight when necessary, or...

It is one of the more poorly plotted (two women take a road trip through the zombie horde, then they take another one), stereotyped (lesbian and abused wife), and repetitive (enter building, fight zombie, run to truck, run over zombie, rinse and repeat) zombie books I've read. I decline to read any more in this series.

Try Mark Tufo's zombie books if you want this type of story with better plotting and characters who act more like normal people would. Or Grant's Deadline series if you like more conspiratorial zombies. Or the Day by Day Armageddon series for a journal style one, or the Undead Situation for a one-off zombie book... they're all better written.

I love This Series Bring it on Zompocalypse

What did you love best about The First Days?

The characters were well developed and there was hardly any down time or calmness.
I think guns and zombies go together perfectly, so it's all good!!