End of Days: Books 1-7 Box Set

By: Sam J. Fires

Narrated by: Seth Podowitz, Gerald Hill, Jorjeana Marie, Stephanie Willing, Stacy Gonzalez, P. J. Ochlan

Length: 22 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

During the coldest winter on record, an EMP attack wipes out the nation's power and cripples the country. As the city spirals into lawless chaos, an investigative journalist, twenty-six-year-old Cassandra Drews, is forced onto the dangerous streets of Portland to begin the long walk to her parents' home in Oregon. But hypothermia and starvation aren't the only dangers Cass and her rescue dog, Daisy, face on their perilous trek.

Danger is stalking them, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Help comes in the form of troubled ex-marine Isaac Winters, who slips back into soldier mode with the city's collapse. Now the trio must work together in a fight for survival as they race to escape the city before violence or the bitter wintry storm can claim them. Do they have what it takes to make it out alive? Or will they be crushed by the brutality of the unforgiving cold?

From Sam J Fires comes the riveting End of Days series, a post-apocalyptic EMP survival thriller featuring flawed, complex characters and adrenaline-fueled action adventure. Collecting all seven books in the series, this box-set edition is perfect for fans of Ryan Schow, Grace Hamilton, Kyla Stone, and Jack Hunt.

©2023 Sam J. Fires (P)2023 Dreamscape Lore

The good bad and ugly

too much cooinstadance throughout the story. Father was unbelieveable character for such nice daughters and mother.

Slow mover

I was disappointed in the slow moving plot. The narration also seemed to overplay emotions or attitudes at times.

Very hard read for tying together

Could of used chapters unsteady of different books to follow characters. very very hard to follow.

Could Have Been Much Better

I try to give constructive critiques because just saying it "wasn't good" or dealing in generics doesn't really help, and I see a lot of potential with this author, I really do!🤔🤪

The narration was mostly good, but the last soliloquy by the cult leader villain was clearly tainted by the opinion of the reader. He was tired of the guy's thought process and it was abundantly clear that he was🤣.

Let me say first that there are some good preparedness tips included in the story. The ingredients were all there for a fantastic story, as were the characters, but it feels like they were all wasted in a peon against preppers.

Cassie and Charlie were both kind of annoying. The author makes it crystal clear repeatedly that both had been "trained" ad nauseum by their over the top, selfish prepper parents, who wouldn't "share" with those who hadn't prepared. Both had Krav Maga training, yet both kept getting beaten up because they broke Krav's cardinal rule: you keep hitting using disabling moves, especially to legs, knees, feet, arms and throat until you can safely walk away. Leave them unable to chase you or preferring to find an easier target!! And you actually leave, not stand over them to see your handiwork giving them time to grab you again.🙄

Governments in Western countries have been talking about the inevitable time of an EMP or Coronal Mass Effect for many years now. The Bible speaks of preparing too for a time when the sun will not shine in Isa13:10, Amos8:9, Matt24:29 and Rev6:12. HE tells us to prepare in Prov22:3 and 27:12. People "choose" whether they will listen or not, prepare or not...they even do things to sabotage those that do choose to prepare, giving away supplies, causing unnecessary damage or making them targets by talking about the fact that there are some who choose to prepare and that if something does happen, they'll just take from "those people" SMH🙄. Some will start to prepare, then eat everything during a hard month without replacing their stock. Those that don't prepare even for regular times of winter outages are often Very Wasteful of whatever they are given, because it's not their preferred food type. They don't want seeds, or to help grow the food, just a handout! Preppers prepare for the number of people in their family plus a few others for a specific time frame. Food meant to feed 5 for a year becomes only enough for 2 for 3 months very, very quickly!! And it's not appreciated! 2Thess3 speaks of those who don't work not being allowed to eat!! Many times in this story, the townsfolk were completely unwilling to contribute anything but pure meanness. How many more would be willing to share if people showed some gratitude or willingness to help grow and harvest the food. Most preppers keep a bit extra just for those kinds of people.

In my opinion, the worst offenders are people who live in small towns, often on acreage, places that have harsh winters, where common sense should have residents stay prepared for power outages and road shutdowns for at least 2-3 weeks. Doesn't matter if the car runs when the road is too icy, slick, flooded, etc...to be manuevered on safely! This story is set in exactly that kind of town. Instead of utilizing their "training" to show people what to do, Cass and Charlie spend all their time cursing the parents that raised them, expecting hand-outs, which they don't get at least in part because of their ungrateful attitudes. Both "Steadfastly Refuse To See" what's right in front of them. So whenever their observational skill training should have made giving descriptions, counts of people, weapons or food and apparent strengths and weaknesses in a given situation, a benefit, instead they are emotional basket cases. It does no good being trained to shoot if every single time there's an encounter they turn weak-kneed. That makes absolutely no sense, because with repetition they should get better not worse. Charlie could have formed a small team to help chop firewood and check on the elders. Daniel, at least, would have helped her.

Harper was a flat out mess!! Never once did she organize going door2door for medical supplies or even flip through an herbal treatment book. In a mountainous region, Usnea/Old Man's Beard, an antibiotic, literally grows in the trees. Cattails can be eaten, used to purify water and stop bleeding in open wounds. Harper could have given a class during a town meeting on how to purify water using plastic bottles, sand/gravel, charcoal from the woodburning fires they all had to keep constantly going, coarse sand and using cloth as a filter, then boiling. If done in a liter soda bottle using part to be the filter and the other half to catch it, many would not have gotten so sick and died. Most older residents keep mint growing in their gardens/window planters, that would quell the nausea as would making tea out of blackberry/blueberry/raspberry leaves which are astringent and would help with swelling. Or making electrolyte water with salt, sugar, honey/syrup and a little kool-aid or fruit juice. So what did Harper's vaunted head knowledge do for anyone? Did she use honey to help close wounds (that's what was used before new skin liquid bandages were manufactured)...Nope! Did she make pine needle tea which is high in VitC for her patients...Nope! Did she scout out witch hazel or castor oil for hot packs or scavenge for hot water bottles...lots of seniors in that town...Nope! She kept crying over situations instead of using her brain to find workable solutions. She didn't even ask any retired nurses about reliable remedies. Instead, she ran out headlong into danger with guns she never used without a plan. I kept expecting a "friendly fire" incident.

I will read another book from this author, if it's newer, in the hopes that it will be better researched.

Well performed underwhelmingly written

first off kudos to the narrators for making the flow of this story tolerable, they took a poorly written story and made it a tolerable listen. too many oversights and what felt like a way to rushed timeline with poorly built characters. if this story would have had less things going on it would have given more time to build some depth around the basic storyline. not bad enough to request a audible refund but it will be not be one I listen to again

Twilight Zone Town.

Overall I'd say this was worth one credit for this many hours and I will give the author credit before expressing what I disliked about the book since the latter is much longer.
The author did a great job of character building and the choice to have multiple narrators is allways a great idea.
The author also did a fantastic job of laying out logistical issues and resource management as to how much was available in a "small town".
The author also did a good job of writing in the passage of time and how long it takes to travel on foot over distances.
The narrators were for the most part excellent as well.
I very much appreciated the authors lack of the "GD" expletives and lack of cursing all together. it's over used in many books by authors so it's to the authors credit they didn't used this as a crutch.

Now, the parts that are lacking.
After a while the story drags and nothing is ever really explained.
I found myself worrying more about the author than anything.
Meadowview was a town full of male and female Karen's and psychos. I can count the number of mentally stable people on one hand.

Granted, I understand the author was trying to convey how humans will act when society collapses, but the portrayed malice was too far and came off as that this is how they were before the power went out.
Never have I heard about an entire community of people who were so selfish, angry, greedy, incapable of leaning, and down right incompetent.

It being a "small town" continued to be used as if an excuse or reason for this behavior, but I was born and raised in a small town and it was nothing like this.
Then again, that was Alabama and this is in Oregon, so maybe this is a reference I'm too southern to understand.
It absolutely reinforced my lack of willingness to travel up north though.

There is a cult in this book that troubles the town while the power is out but the author makes the "prepper community" seem very much like a cult as well.
Between the preppers, Meadowview, and the Cult, there isn't a lot of discernable differences except perhaps the preppers are presented as more compitent, however you never really get to see this first hand, you only are introduced to 2 members of that community.

The cult had real potential but the big reveal of just how depraved they were came far too late in the story for anything to be manifest from it to push along the drama and story.

I don't know what kind of preppers the author has known but I'm one and I know a lot and none of them are as evil as the preppers in this book are represented to be.
Most preppers want to live and thrive, the preppers in this book series are more loke NPCs just surviving and I'm not even sure they know why.

I'm also worried about what kind of child hood the author had, between the prepper parents and the chief of police, they rank among some of the worst parents and people I've ever heard of.
People who committed the worst of crimes and were willing to murder their own children rather than share with them.
In fact the preppers might have been more of a cult in this book series than the cult it's self.

SPOILERS.....

At the end, a character shoots a bad guy and later talks about why he doesn't know why it bothers him because the person he shot was evil.
Gee guy, I dunno, maybe because you shot him 32 times?
The author likely doesn't know this and probably meant he shot him a few times.
But it said "he emptied another magazine into him with his glock 17".
Bro, a glock 17s standard magazine is 17 rounds. Even if it was 15, that's still 30 rounds he pumped into the guy, yea, that's gonna be gory and bother you a little.

The story never really feels fully fleshed out and there's a lot to be desired but I couldn't give it below a 3 star, I was thinking 5 out of 10 maybe.

I hope authors will do more research into what they're writing about in the future. This wasn't the worst as far as inconsistencies go with the characters supposed various fields of expertise, but they also weren't believable as a Marine combat veteran, prepper, nor law enforcment detective.

Too many plot holes

Great idea for a story, but actually more entertaining to find the plot holes as it's being read. Good readers, though.

too liberal

The story would have been much better but it was just give away everything and not teach people how to fend for themselves very sad story I don't recommend it to anyone

perfection!

I highly recommend this series, definitely kept my attention till the end, but now my heart breaks to say goodbye to the people that I became so attached to.

The whole end of day series 

Just finished listening to all of them absolutely love them big fan of the post apocalyptic books so so far one of the best ones I’ve read specially, since it takes place in my home state everywhere you were talking about I knew exactly where you were and it made me get more connected to the books.