Bat out of Hell

An Eco Thriller

By: Alan Gold

Narrated by: Kristin Price

Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

From the jungles of Indonesia to the very heart of New York City comes a plague that kills 100 percent of its victims. Medicine's greatest nightmare, this modern Black Death is caused by the most virulent and uncontrollable mutant virus humanity has ever witnessed. And medicine can do nothing to stop its merciless spread.

Scientist Debra Hart and her team of experts are tasked by the United Nations to stop the disease. Racing against time, they must find the cause and the cure and figure out why this deadly disease - spread by bats - is killing thousands in cities across the globe. Debra and her team will struggle to stop the disease from spreading to millions more, even if it means killing off every bat alive.

But fighting to prevent her are manic animal rights' activists who rail against species genocide, even if it means risking the deaths of human beings. And hidden behind a cloak of secrecy is a crazed academic who'll even kill top American government officials to save one living creature. This is the nightmare scenario that Debra faces as the public becomes so terrified of bats that entire communities become vigilantes.

©2015 Alan Gold (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

It's OK, but....

I don't particularly dislike the book, but I'm not doing backflips over it either. I *do* dislike the inclusion of the, apparently, obligatory love match between the geeky need girl scientist and her strapping secret service protector, though. And I got to stay home from school to watch the first mood landing...and the first man to set foot on the moon. Hint: it wasn't John Glenn. Also, I disliked that the nerdy scientist was ferried around in Marine One and Air Force Two...despite the fact that the president and vice president weren't on said aircraft. Which means that they weren't Marine One or Air Force Two at the time. Those are small issues, I know...but they really got on my nerves and are an indication of lack of attention to detail and took me out of the story. I don't anticipate listening to this a second time.

The only problem with the actual performance is that I have never heard such a horrible Scottish accent in my entire life! Better to have just made reference to how thick it was supposed to be and keep the performer's American accent intact. Other than that, the performance was just fine. I did deduct a star for it, though.

Two separate stories

The eco-thriller and the romance are two separate stories that really don’t make sense together. In fact, the romance aspects take away from the eco-thriller story. We have a strong, brilliant woman… and for some reason we should believe that suddenly, in the midst of an emergency, she would be sidetracked by “silly hormones.”

Save the animals, No the other ones!

I like the story it was different. I could even endure the main character getting all in her own head about not "getting any" for a long time.

Not sure I can finish

The first chapter seems to be nothing but introducing political beliefs. Not sure I will make it much farther.

It’s so so

Performance is kind of blah. Story is a little shallow. It won’t have you hanging on every word.

Not at all what I expected

Narrator did best she could with the content.
Female lead was not a strong character. I really could have done without her sexual fantasies.
I expected a medical/research tale with some exciting bat encounters. Nope. if you are not into politics don't bother with this one.

Jumbled accents and bad politics

The premise of the book sounded great. Who doesn’t love a good pandemic story? But the red flags started when Gold tried to imagine what British politicians would do in such a scenario. That was made worse by the awful jumbled up accents that Price was throwing at us. Is it Irish? Scottish? Klingon? Utter chaos!
Also, any decent diplomat or international relations connoisseur hasn’t used the term “third world country” in decades. A 2015 book should reflect that. The right term is “developing countries”.
Oh, and an intelligent female scientist couldn’t resist having a girly crush on the hot president and telling us aaaaall about her thoughts?
A Republican president worried about ethnic diversity in a scientific team? Give me a break. That is suspending reality way too much!

Gave it high ratings but MANY mistakes!

There were so many mistakes, plus giving us a fairly believable female character - except that she suddenly is gushing with dime store romance lines over the men in her life. That made me almost give up listening. Interested in hearing about the bats, however, and with all the political malarkey, and the numerous plot points that never really were fulfilled, it was still a good listen while working on other projects.
I would edit this far, far more carefully.

Really good plot....the romanticism is blaa

I really enjoyed the book. The romance feels like it was forced into the story line to sell books, but they fell flat. Managers and and Publishers need to let authors write or have real work people preread them.

Too much politics.

It was way too political it just a hand with the distrust of Republicans that hand with the naivety of Democrats it was just a bad addition to what would’ve been a good story needs to drop all of the wherewithal with which president was good and which one was bad and how it worked out for them