Invasion

Alien Invasion, Book 1

By: Sean Platt, Johnny B. Truant

Narrated by: Ray Porter

Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's Summary

They are coming. The countdown has begun.

First visible only as blips on a telescope image, the discovery of objects approaching from Jupiter's orbit immediately sets humanity on edge. NASA doesn't even bother to deny the alien ships' existence. The popular Astral space app (broadcasting from the far side of the moon and accessible by anyone with Internet) has already shown the populace what is coming. So the news has turned from evasion to triage, urging calm and offering the few facts they have:

The objects are enormous, perfectly round spheres numbering in the dozens, maybe hundreds. They are on an approach vector for Earth. And they will arrive in six days.

©2015 Sean Platt, Johnny B. Truant (P)2015 Podium Publishing

"terrible, absolutely terrible"

a bunch of self involved assholes flee an imminent alien invasion while having trivial arguments.

slow headache

27 chapters of a family stuck in traffic. Aliens? not in this book. very boring.

Just no.

It's like an alien invasion on Desperate Housewives meets a reality show with the most shallow, crude, and idiotically narrow minded daily life, complete with a silly attempt to "deepen" the main character with some pseudo-shamanistic stereotype drug use to give him "premonitions" about the world ending.

He's a paranoid billionaire, who, despite infinite resources, still botched what should have been a very easy extraction process. You don't have a secret apocalypse lair in Vail... and then take some POS high end minivan to DRIVE from NYC, out of town, to your private JET before FAA grounds all flights.

You hire a fucking helicopter to extract you and your family; in less than 15 minutes you are air born with private security. Done. This is manageable with a fraction of the purposed "wealth" this guy has. You do NOT send hysterical early 20-something yoga bimbo to drive across New York City to pick the kids up from school, then belittle and bemoan her obvious ineptitude--DUH. Seriously, that is his own fuck-up for assigning a job to someone who lacks the skill set to handle it. You hire a fucking professional if it's life and death: if you have that kind of money, that kind of paranoia, you have that kind of backup.

Oh, and his ex-wife, who he still sleeps with behind his bimbo's back, is ALSO driving from LA to meet up with them in the Vail Lair--his 15-yo son wants to bone his step-bimbo, and the teenage daughter essentially kidnapped her Indian boyfriend, now dragging HIM along to the Vail Lair, too--forget how THAT reads. The author, with the endless crude sex & rape jokes, clearly intends to encourage his characters' poor choices, endlessly.

I can't even get to the third day of their "adventure". This is the kind of family that you adamantly pray does NOT manage to reproduce after the world ends. Far from creating relatable and interesting characters, everyone thus introduced has no redeemable qualities, no depth, and whine and argue about EVERYTHING.

Tedious and boring

This is probably the most tedious and boring book I’ve listened to in years. If you’ve ever driven cross country in a car full of whining children then you know what this book is about. It’s a week long road trip to hell. If I was the lead character I would have ditched everyone by the side of the road after the 3rd day. By the end of the book I was skipping to the end of each chapter after listening to only 2 or 3 minutes of bickering and complaining. It was all I could take. And the ending? It was totally retarded. They guy after suffering through all that BS walks outside and allows himself to be abducted? What a stupid ending. Sorry but I will not be reading the next 36 books of this trilogy from hell.

Road trip - no aliens so far

Any additional comments?

Am returning this. A couple of hours of road trip has left me losing the will to live. The aliens might be coming but I don't hold out much hope. If they come and wipe out this boring family it will be a mercy.

Drag, drag, drag

I have never listened to anything that dragged like this. Had I been reading it, I would have abandoned it after chapter 5. As it was, I fast forwarded through one droning chapter after another.

Insulting

The women characters are always complaining, whining and acting self absorbed. They act completely helpless. The dialog of the ex-wife is not believable. The aliens are coming, they almost died and she acts like a child. She refers to Raj as "Lamb Curry" and tells him to go do some "Math".

A waste of Ray Porters amazing narrative ability

Every character is annoying, sel-centered and combative over the most inane things.

I hated the characters so much, I couldn't finish the book.

Just what I was looking for!

Loved the slow steady build to the climax of the book. Perfect reader. Can't wait for book 2.

Armageddon Redux

Fantastic introduction to author's Platt and Truant. Reasonably fast paced and well laid out "Alien Invasion" story. If you liked the movie Armageddon, you will love this book. My only issue with it is that book 2 is not available yet..... Ray Porter does a fantastic job with the narration. Very well done and worth the credit.

Not what I expected.

The story line centres mostly on the interaction between the members of a family and their reaction to an imminent Alien invasion of approaching ships . That unfortunately is all you get in this book. It talks about the breakdown of civilisation and the cleverness of the hero in building an underground bunker which they have to journey to, and their adventure on the way. Yawned a lot. Sorry showed promise but in my opinion didn't push any buttons. I listened to the first part of the next book, more of the same. I will not be buying it.

Well narrated disappointing story

Would you try another book written by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant or narrated by Ray Porter?

I'd definitely buy another book narrated by Ray Porter as I've enjoyed previous audiobooks he's narrated and he did a good job with this one too

What could Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

it's not so much that the story is bad...it's just not what I expected having read the synopsis and listened to the samples. I was expecting more science fiction...more focus on the imminent invasion whereas this dealt more with the breakdown of society. I didn't even make it half way through the book but got so bored of the riots etc. Maybe the next book will be better...I'll never know.

Which scene did you most enjoy?

the first few scenes, where the news of the imminent invasion first broke.

Struggling to Finish

Started off good, but I'm struggling with this one.

The narrator is putting me off. His normal male voice sounds like Brian from Family Guy, his female voice for Heather sounds like a female Jack Black.

The way the narration plays out Myers (main male character) is way too serious compared to everyone else who acts likes it's a vacation.

I'll try and get through this one.

Not sure if it was the narrator or the female char

They just really grated on me, not sure if it was the narrator doing the female voice badly or doing a shrill nasal voice perfectly but either way I listened about half way and lost interest.

Unlikeable characters and grating impressions of women

How to make the apocalypse boring? First make one of your characters a poorly written unfunny and unlikable comedian, next make constant ham fisted references to near future technology and finally shoehorn the first half of your book into a car ride. It probably continues on for a while longer but I gave up.

All of the narrators female voices sound almost exactly the same with a whinny trill despite a couple of descriptions that they should sound quite different. This combines with all of them and being portrayed as spoilt brat damsels in distress who don’t understand the seriousness of their situation.

But don’t think you get a reprieve from the male lead who is an exemplar of the arrogant CEO type “he made the money so he got to make his families decisions”.

I’ve never given up on an audiobook before and had to write this review to try warn others away.

Apocalyptic alien invasion of Earth yet again, but this time done much better!

This is a fantastic novel with great narration. The apocalyptic Alien invasion is a theme that recurs often, but somehow this one has been done better than most. My only criticism is that it was a bit short. That could just be because I'm used to reading epic novels now, but to be fair to the authors, this is a series and I already own the next two books.

Nothing to commend this book

There was not one single likeable character in this book. I found myself hoping that aliens, that never appeared, would zap them all in to oblivion. The story line had so much potential but was dull and predictable. The female characters were sexulised and helpless. The males were either over flowing on testosterone or ineffectual. Boring. boring, boring.

More of a prologue than a complete book

I can't consider this book as being complete. It really is just a preamble to the main event. Having said that, I can't wait to get to the main event as the story is well written and the narration is awesome. Book 2 commencing as soon as I type this full stop (or period as the pretent English speakers prefer to call it).

1% Alien, 90% BS

What disappointed you about Invasion?

I was expecting a book about Aliens, however, the only Alien part of the book is in the title. The rest is only about one family trying to get to a bunker, running from other human beings. It's Walking Dead without the zombies...
Narration was very good, though.

Would you ever listen to anything by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant again?

Yes.

Any additional comments?

More aliens, less human relations.
Describe the aliens, how do they look? What do they want etc.
Not going to get the next one, as sample made me think it will be only about other people trying to get into the bunker and again, not enough about aliens.
This title should move to romance category.

Great start to the series

I genuinely enjoyed this story. It's a good start to a series and introduces you to the main characters well. I found the family interesting and the pacing was great. I know some people complain that this book is just the precursor to the actual Alien Invasion but I think that's a good thing. It introduces the threat then becomes a survivalist/prepper story focusing on the family trying to get to their destination whilst society starts to fall apart around them.

Luckily, both books 2 & 3 are out now so I'm going to go straight onto them as if it were one long story! Really looking forward to finding out what happenes next.

As usual, Ray Porter does a great job narrating. His pace is on point and he's a pleasure to listen to.