The Mountain and The City

The Complete Saga

De: Brian Martinez

Narrado por: Victoria Smart

An epidemic has killed off most humans, turning the rest into beasts with sharp nails, keen senses and an insatiable hunger. Now, years later, a solitary survivor hides in a trailer above a dead city. This is life with the door and windows taped shut, where survival comes down to two, simple rules: stay quiet, and protect the air.

One day, a visitor comes up the mountain. It's a meeting that leads to a fateful decision, and a sacrifice that will change everything.

Collected here for the first time, The Mountain and The City is a post-apocalyptic serial that has kept its faithful listeners on the edge of their seats time and time again.

©2012 Brian Martinez (P)2013 Brian Martinez

Great story but the audio version was a bit echoy'

Where does The Mountain and The City rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This is a pretty good apocalyptic book.

What did you like best about this story?

The Mountain and the City has a great first person narrator. Brian Martinez has created a great character with which he explores the effects of having grown in an apocalyptic world: trust issues, stunted emotional development, issues with morality in a survival mode, etc. It was very well done.

What three words best describe Victoria Smart’s voice?

Echo, monotone, low

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Every time the Main Character was looking after Child.

Any additional comments?

Near the end of the book I was thinking that this book lacked a lot of world building and that we were pretty much blind as to what had happened to the world. Then, BAM! the very end is the story of how everything went to hell. Great story.

Wasn't sure at first

A story of survival, regret, and redemption in a virus ridden apocalypse. The minimalistic​ nature of the writing threw me at first, but I quickly realized how integral to the story it was. Loved it.

A fresh take on the zombie theme

Where does The Mountain and The City rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

A solid listen. Well written and decently narrated. It takes the idea of the zombie apocalypse and injects a bit more humanity into the creatures than is usually seen.

What other book might you compare The Mountain and The City to and why?

World War Z - The Mountain and The City is a serialized novel, so each chapter feels more like an individual episode than chapters often do. Because of this, the read style is similar to WWZ, in which several different stories are told woven together from an almost journal-style perspective. TMATC is certainly more of a traditional narrative, but still felt like a similar read to WWZ.

Which character – as performed by Victoria Smart – was your favorite?

The performance didn't stand out as anything particularly memorable to me.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Yes. The second half of the book actually takes a pretty steep decent into some pretty emotionally compelling material.

Any additional comments?

A very interesting read. It starts off seeming to be a staple zombie apocalypse story. It doesn't take long to discover that there is more to the creatures in The Mountain and The City than just mindless walking corpses. The story does a great job of giving the reader (listener) perspective from several different viewpoints. I would certainly recommend giving this a read if you're into post-apocalyptic or zombie literature, you might just find something you haven't seen before.I wish I had known that the novel was a serial before I went into it. After finding out that that was the case, the pacing made a lot more sense. There are a lot of climactic moments through the novel, and I kept thinking it was about to end, only to notice that there was a ton more. This was always a pleasant surprise, as the story kept getting better, but I did think it was a little strange to start with.

A Touching Single Book Post-Apocalypse Novel

The Mountain and the City is dreamy, poignant novel of a young lady in a post apocalypse world. she has lived in isolation for a number of years, since the collapse, but leaves her isolation for an unexpected reason, to readers and I expect the character.

The world itself described was unique. We aren't talking standard template slow zombies, fast zombies, etc, but a world of new ideas. It was a touching story of humanity. When being an uninfected human doesn't make you human, nor an infected inhuman.

I liked how the book wrapped up with part zero, which covered the collapse and the girl.

Both endings (the main story, and part zero) were on the sad side, I do admit.

On a technical note, I found the audio volume level a bit low. It was OK on headphones, but when using my phone speaker I was unable to listen to the book, as opposed to most other books I listen to. The narrator speed was a little slow as well, but the audiobook speed adjustments handle that.

After burning myself out on Zombie books (most of

them utter trash) I found myself looking for a dystopic novel to listen to. I finally purchased TM&TC... after it lay languishing in my wish list for well nigh on a year.

I am SO glad I purchased it. The story and premise are unique to the zombie genre- it is well constructed world but the author is "John LeCarre like" in his lack of "telling you how it all happened" but letting the reader deduce, through scattered and dissonant clues, what is really going on.
i found the child like language of the protagonist poignant and the use of phrase (which the author should copy-rite) "for that is what life is" provoking on so many levels.

Push on past zero- I beg you. The conclusion is every bit as good as the prologue- which is not to say that the novel (or novels- not sure which) is not outstanding.

Well written, disturbing and, as all good novels are, a reflection of the fears and desires of our current age!