Feral

By: James DeMonaco, B. K. Evenson

Narrated by: Kirsten Potter, Brittany Pressley, Erin Spencer, Jorjeana Marie, Hillary Huber

Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's Summary

From James DeMonaco, the writer/director of The Purge film franchise, comes the provocative and terrifying last stand of a lone outpost of women in the wake of a deadly pandemic.

Allie Hilts was still in high school when a fire at a top-secret research facility released an air-borne pathogen that quickly spread to every male on the planet, killing most. Allie witnessed every man she ever knew be consumed by fearsome symptoms: scorching fevers and internal bleeding, madness and uncontrollable violence. The world crumbled around her. No man was spared, and the few survivors were irrevocably changed. They became disturbingly strong, aggressive, and ferocious. Feral.

Three years later, Allie has joined a group of hardened survivors in an isolated, walled-in encampment. Outside the guarded walls, the ferals roam free and hunt. Allie has been noticing troubling patterns in the ferals' movements, and a disturbing number of new faces in the wild. Something catastrophic is brewing on the horizon, and time is running out. The ferals are coming, and there is no stopping them.

With Feral, writer/director James DeMonaco and acclaimed novelist Brian Evenson have created a challenging and entertaining novel of timely horror and exhilarating suspense.

©2017 James DeMonaco (P)2017 Random House Audio

Critic Reviews

" Feral starts out by being creepy. As it moves forward Feral becomes chilling and then turns terrifying. This is definitely - absolutely, positively - a book to be read with all the lights on!" (Robert McCammon, best-selling author of Swan Song and Boy's Life)

"Feral is nasty excitement, a wild, jolting ride from start to finish. Enjoy." (Andrew Pyper, author of The Demonologist)

"A bloody tale of apocalypse...Told from multiple perspectives, this nail-biter, packed with plenty of gore to satisfy horror fans, offers a neat woman-power twist on the zombie-apocalypse story and a surprisingly poignant, satisfying ending." ( Publishers Weekly)

Melodramatic YA

This was a REAL disappointment. Presented as 'horror' genre...not even close. The main narrator wasn't too bad, but the others were whiney and lame. Of course the material the narrators had to work with wasn't stellar either. Unless you're into meatless YA, pass on this.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

ultimately it’s just not very good

I got my first inklings that Feral, by James DeMonaco (creator of The Purge franchise) and BK Evenson, was going to be a troublesome narrative right from the very start. Allie, a high school girl who the male authors want to make sure we understand sleeps in the nude, wakes up to a text message prompting her to click an innocuous link, which ends up taking her to a site where she can watch her best friend having sex. It’s clear to Allie that her friend is being secretly filmed, and she’s awfully gutted over this discovery. Thankfully, after Allie tells her friend that the boyfriend had invaded her privacy, secretly filmed them having sex, and then mass mailed the video to their entire high school, the bestie is totally OK with all this! It’s awesome news, in fact, the bestest thing ever since chocolate and Pornhub. She’s gonna be so popular now, like OMG! And then, on an otherwise completely unrelated note, the apocalypse hits.

So, look, I had some issues with Feral. In order to discuss them, I’m going to issue a BIG OL’ SPOILER WARNING FOR HERE ON OUT. Please consider yourself warned. Cool? Cool.

Come to the blog if you want the spoiler.

On the narrative front, Feral is a steaming, mendacious, tone-deaf pile of scat. On the narration front, it’s actually pretty well done and the story’s shifting points-of-view are told by different women. Structurally, this book is also a mess, with some chapters in third-person omniscient and others in first-person, usually for little rhyme or reason, and mostly just because, with occasional narration shift between Allie and Kim, when the authors or Allie can spare a moment’s thought for the poor, burgeoning twelve-year-old actress. The narrators are solid and adept in their readings, and I didn’t find any flaws in their delivery of the material or in the production of the audiobook itself. I just wish they would have had far better material to narrate.

Feral is well-packaged and well-narrated, but ultimately it’s just not very good. At its core, it’s essentially little more than poorly done Young Adult fiction strapped into a zombie harness. There are no shocks and even fewer surprises, other than how badly this whole damn mess was conceived and executed.

Audiobook was purchased for review by the ABR.

Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog

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3 of 3 people found this review helpful

LOVED!!

This book scared the @?%# out of me! EXCELLENT! I would definitely recommend it to anyone

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

I love this book

This book drew me in and I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. Hope there's another book coming. Doesn't feel like the end.

Really will enjoy a wild ride

I really enjoyed this book. Many twists and turns. Unpredictable ending that left me speechless.

Worth the trip - Wanting a 2nd Feral novel

What did you love best about Feral?

Kept up with the pace, dragged only in moments where character buildup was needed, made me able to picture everything in my mind while I was away on road trip

What did you like best about this story?

The story itself, its around the type of stories I like to read

Which character – as performed by the narrators – was your favorite?

Alley

Any additional comments?

Wanting a 2nd Feral novel. Preferably bringing back the same characters and continuing the story and maybe bring back one character in particular that seems to not have made it. All though a good story and fast read, it is very predictable in most cases and you as the reader kind of know what to expect before the events take place. That being said I enjoyed it, take it for what it is. I did not care for "The Purge" movies, seen them with my kids and they all suck but I am a fan of BK Evenson and his stories of Dead Space, based on the game. Waiting for another Dead Space novel but enjoyed this good read.

Entertaining YA novel

I assumed that this book would be a horror novel because of the connections with the film, The Purge. While I've never actually seen The Purge, yhe previews make it look frightening. Well, you know what they say about assuming... Definitely not a scary book, and not an edge of your seat nail biter. It was an interesting, if subdued, plot that was obviously written for the YA audience.