Cattle

The Fearlanders

De: Joseph Duncan

Narrado por: Ian M. Walker

The Dead Have Awakened

It is 10 years after the global apocalypse. The Phage, the zombie virus that brought the world to its knees, has mutated, restoring the minds of its undead victims: their personalities, their memories... even their dreams. The living dead are no longer the mindless monsters that drove mankind to the brink of extinction.

But they still possess their insatiable hunger for human flesh.

Kept Like Animals

Brent Scarborough is a veteran survivor. He has been dodging the undead for nearly a decade. When he learns there is a city controlled and populated by living human beings, a place they call Home, he and his companion, Harold Killian, head immediately for this refuge of the living.

But they are captured on the last leg of their journey. Harold is killed, and Brent is imprisoned in a terrible zombie gulag, a nightmarish facility where the living are kept like animals and forced to breed for their hungry zombie masters.

Refusing to be defeated, Brent forges alliances with his desperate fellow inmates. His only goal is escape, but bearing down on the facility is a herd of mindless chompers, zombies who have not yet reawakened, and it is the largest and most destructive herd the living and dead have ever seen!

Set 10 years after the events in the popular zombie novel Mort, Cattle is a no-holds-barred action horror novel that is as original as it is fearless. Author Joseph Duncan (who formerly wrote under the pen name Rod Redux) has pulled out all the stops in his latest post-apocalyptic novel.

©2014 Joseph Duncan (P)2015 Joseph Duncan

worst narrator ever.

I read the book months back, & like to get audio books for when I have a migraine & can't read. This narrator was British but tried to preform American accents, which made most of the characters sound like they're from the south. This guy even pronounces things odd, like "ar-kansas" for the state "Arkansas ", lol. But what pissed me off was the fact that a couple of the characters, max & amy, were completely unable to understand. Also when he preformed any of the zombies, if I hadn't already read the book, I wouldn't be able to put together any of the things they said either. I'm writing this during chapter 26 & not sure if I can be patient enough to listen to the rest. I'm pissed I wasted a credit on this. I'd recommend you read the book & save your $/credit!!

Good book, not so great narration.

I loved this story. It is dirty, ugly, and quite interesting. The narrator's zombie voices are difficult to understand a lot. His narration was good but the voices were not.

FRESH MEAT

HE MIGHT NOT BE THE SHARPEST KNIFE IN THE SILVERWARE DRAWER
Holly Cow, this is really good!!! This is the best book I have listened to all year. I have repeatedly said that Cell by King is my favorite Zombie book and I have read a ton, but now that has changed. This catches your attention right from the start and you might be a little worried that is going to become the same old same old and then the story takes an about face and becomes like no other Zombie book you have read. Such a unique take on the genre. The story continues to build, get better and get better as it goes along.

YOU APOLOGIZE A LOT
Warning, do not attempt to eat a meal, while listening. There are some gut wrenching gross moments in this book. It is not full of them, but the ones presented do the trick. Off hand I am thinking of a certain amputation scene. There are also others. They are included in order to further the story, they are not gore for gore sake. I'M SORRY

OF COURSE I CAN, I'M FROM TENNESSEE
Now for another very strange part of the listening experience. The narrator is extremely different. At first you may think he sounds a little YA or amateurist. Keep listening, I promise he will grow on you. The naïve voice he gives to the main character actually plays into the horror. The narrators' voice, often sounds like he has cotton in his mouth. I was convinced that he and the writer were from Australia or some British Colony. I figured he was talking weird to sound American Southern. It is like a cross between The Swedish Chef on Sesame Street and Forrest Gump. Instead of Arkcansaw, it is R-Kansas. His friends or not his buddies, but his chums. Rear lawn instead of Backyard. A Gain instead of again. I looked the author up and he is from Southern Illinois. Anyways, it works, it works very well.

This is a horror, and done well. My first Joseph Duncan, but not my last.

Interesting but....

I liked this story. It has an interesting twist on the zombie genre, however, the narration leaves a bit to be desired. Narrator has a British accent but attempting American voices, most of which come out sounding a bit southern without much difference between each character, except for a couple which I really, really struggled to understand at all. That would be my only observation, but not enough of a concern to keep me from enjoying this listen. I would recommend it.

Uhhhh. What do you say?

What does one day about a book like this? It was a terrible story! Not terribly written, in fact the writing as well as the narration were both superb. The story, however, is awful. It made me feel ill a few times but for some reason I couldn't quit listening. Morbid curiosity I guess.

The ending was satisfying or it would have gotten one star. It's a fascinating take on the zombie genre and made me consider many, many moral dilemmas.

I would say that you need to hear this book at your own risk.

Chewing through Cattle...

While not usually a reader of zombie fiction or sci-fi in general I enjoyed the book and particularly liked the narration The story was well written, story line was clear and moved along nicely and I got involved with the characters and cared about then. It also had some deeper ideas to offer as allegory in our present way of life. Nothing to blow your mind, but nevertheless a good read.

New Take On Zombies

What made the experience of listening to Cattle the most enjoyable?

The voice artist provides very distinct and well textured character voices.

Which character – as performed by Ian M. Walker – was your favorite?

Harold, good character, great interpretation by the voice artist.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I would have if I could have, it was definitely exciting and engaging. A well paced story.

Any additional comments?

Overall a great take on the zombie genre.

A new bar has been set for zombies!

Note: This is a sequel of sorts to the novel Mort, formerly published under a pen name (Rod Redux). It works just fine as a stand alone.

10 years after the phage turned most humans into flesh-craving zombies, it has now mutated. Now zombies can awake to their memories, can dream again, and they definitely know what they are eating. So they have started organizing into nations and have created breeding facilities to maintain their food supply. This includes capturing humans for a people breeding facility. Yep. It’s just as horrendous as it sounds.

Brent and Harold have been traveling together for a while now. They heard a radio broadcast from a nearby human town, one that has a truce of sorts with the closest zombie population. They are trying to make it to this haven called Home when they are spotted by a zombie patrol. Harold is killed in the pursuit and Brent is captured. However, the Revenants (zombies who have their wits about them) need a new rooster for their human hens. So Brent is tossed in with the other roosters; Ian, Jamie, and Vicars. They’re a right cheery bunch. Right off, the three suspect the Revenants may be planning to retire one of them and none of them want to be it.

The prison/meat plant is an old supermarket. The men are kept in the back where the butcher’s station use to be. The ladies have their cubicles and the zombies have their stations inside and then quarters outside (old trailers and such). It seems so orderly and civil…. except that part where they are breeding the ladies for baby meat. Muriel is one of the older yet still of breeding age ladies. She had escaped, again, and was recaptured at the same time that Brent was caught. Throughout the story, she often provides comfort and advise to Brent. She got the most page time out of all the lady characters and she was my favorite. She was the brains of the bunch and I wish she had gotten a larger role in the story. There’s a limited number of female characters in a sea of male characters (and why is there only 1 female zombie?).

There’s this whole command structure among the zombies and I thought this was interesting. So often, we think of them as pretty brainless, simply reacting to a deep hunger (and indeed, that kind do exist in this world and are called Chompers). So it was different to see them thinking and organizing and holding back from their instant cravings to plan for the future. Also, it was good to see that the Revenants were just as scared of the Chompers as the humans, as the Chompers are none too picky about what kind of meat they are eating. Blech!

While Brent is in this meat prison, he has to make some really tough choices. First, all of them are being coerced into breeding, including the 14 year old Ruth. Definitely a sad state of affairs. Brent has a set of morals, and while some of them have been tarnished, bent, or broken over the years, that is not one of them. It seems Brent’s basic nature is to trust people, but here, in this literally cut throat place, he has to choose very carefully who he can trust. The other roosters are big question marks. Brent’s most difficult position and the tough choices he keeps having to make definitely had me fully engaged throughout the story.

Late in the tale, the author tosses in a little tidbit I really enjoyed. Two characters are added to the mix and they have an odd dialect. Basically, they and their little group of people had become isolated long enough to have developed their own version of the language, making it a little difficult for others to understand them, though in the big picture, they are all speaking the same language (roughly). This is such a realistic probability, that I really enjoyed it being tossed in here.

This was a great zombie read because it was different and original. It’s not just your mindless eating hordes versus the last remaining humans. Nope. These zombies come in different flavors and at least some of them can think and organize. This book sets a new bar for zombie horror fiction.

I bought a copy of this book from Audible.com.

Narration: Ian M. Walker did most things really well and a few things need a little work. First, his female voices could be a bit more feminine. And also, it would be OK for him to show some emotion while narrating (was he bored by the book?). On the other hand, he did this incredible job with the zombie voices – these falling apart, decaying faces and vocal chords make some truly horrible sounds. Walker managed to pull that off and keep the dialogue understandable. Also, later in the book when two characters with their own version of English are tossed in, Walker had to make it sound almost like English and also smooth like the character knew exactly what they were saying. That was well done too.

Graze Cattle if you have the Stomach

Any additional comments?

Cattle looks into a disturbing and terrible world where zombies have risen and people are being farmed for food. In Duncan's world some Zs have begun to regain their intelligence, creating a spectrum of undead from the familiar stumbling droolers to smarty pants zombies that know how to hunt and organize. Oh snap! The zombies are not all bad though. Some realize and despise what they have become. This doesn't stop them from eating the living (or their less realized brothers), most of the time, but they despise it nonetheless. Duncan does a good job of taking this zombie story to dark yet interesting places and gives his characters and events plenty of spin to keep things interesting. Ian Walker's voice seems lost which is perfect with the narration too. Worth chewing on if you can stomach the content.

I Am Not a Zombie Fan! 😱

Three stars is "average" so if you like zombie stories this might rate better.
It is an interesting story about two men surviving a viral phage that initially makes "chompers" (mindless flesh hungry creatures with no mental faculties or memories) and then a mutation several years later creates in many a restoration of cognitive abilities along with access to their pre-zombie memories. These, along with the living either uninflected by the virus or resistant to it make up three classes of society. In this post-apocalyptic nuclear/biological weapon world a tale is told of the living attempting to survive in the midst of the more numerous non-living and return to a place they hear about on the radio -- to the north -- called "home" for the living. 😱