Pandemic

The Extinction Files, Book 1

By: A. G. Riddle

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini

Length: 18 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's Summary

A deadly outbreak in Kenya. A conspiracy beyond imagination. And a race to save humanity in its darkest hour.

From A. G. Riddle, the worldwide best-selling author of The Atlantis Gene and Departure, comes a novel that will change everything you think you know about pandemics.

A hundred miles north of Alaska, an American Coast Guard vessel discovers a sunken submarine at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. It has no national identification and doesn't match the records of any known vessel. Deep within, researchers find evidence of a scientific experiment that will alter our very understanding of the human race.

In Atlanta, Dr. Peyton Shaw is awakened by the phone call she has dreaded for years. As the CDC's leading epidemiologist, she's among the first responders to outbreaks around the world. It's a lonely and dangerous job, but it's her life - and she's good at it. This time she may have met her match. In Kenya, an Ebola-like pathogen has infected two Americans. One lies at death's door. With the clock ticking, Peyton assembles her team and joins personnel from the Kenyan Ministry of Health and the WHO. What they find in the remote village is beyond their worst fears. As she traces the origin of the pathogen, Peyton begins to believe that there is more to this outbreak - that it may be merely the opening act in a conspiracy with far-reaching consequences.

In Berlin, Desmond Hughes awakens in a hotel room with no memory of how he got there or who he is. On the floor he finds a dead security guard from an international pharmaceutical company. His only clue leads him to Peyton Shaw - a woman who seems to know him but refuses to tell him how. With the police searching the city for him, Desmond desperately tries to piece together what happened to him. To his shock and horror, he learns that he may be involved in causing the outbreak - and could hold the only key to stopping it.

As the pathogen spreads around the world, Peyton and Desmond race to unravel the conspiracy behind the pandemic - and uncover secrets some want to keep buried.

©2017 A. G. Riddle (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

Please End. I ended it with 15 mins left!

80% of book excellent. Last 20% was impossible made possible way to much coincidental events. Ending so unbearable and unreachable i pulled the plug with 15 mins left.

Read this before buying, too much hype

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

The narrator was great. I have no complaints about him at all. The problem with this book is that there is literally an hour of plot and 17 hours of "character development". The premise is extremely interesting, but this isn't a case of bad execution, its a case of NO execution. This is a book where millions of people die of a virus, the world is attempted to be taken over by a secret organization, but the ONLY mention of the public and how they react is the hospital being messy. Seriously? I get that you need to leave some things for the next two books, but that doesn't mean you ONLY do character development in book one.

What was most disappointing about A. G. Riddle’s story?

That its missing a story, I get that its the first book in a trilogy, but we don't need to be beaten over the head with why the characters are the way they are. Character development is great, but in this case its taken way too far. For example one character had a troubled youth, and it effected his relationships etc... Well that is explained to us about 20 times and takes up probably 6-7 hours of the book. Its interesting the first time, but to make the same point over and over just distracts from the plot, we get hes messed up we get why, now PLEASE get back to the plot. On top of that there are important characters who are messed up primarily the main bad guy! (granted we are introduced to them towards the end of the book, but whose fault is that?)

All of the people raving about this book either haven't read it or are just fanboys because of his previous series, which I enjoyed but did suffer from some of the same issues. No where near as bad though.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Extremely disappointed, although I do believe this series will get better.

Too hard to swallow

This is not the first A G Riddle book I have read - that was The Atlantis Gene - but it is likely to be the last. While I found The Atlantis Gene long, tedious and a bit boring, Pandemic is a mixture of interesting character development and an incredibly complicated plot. We are asked to believe that one of the characters set up such a complex set of hoops for himself to jump through that it was hard for me as a reader to follow them, but that the character was then able to get through those hoops successfully. I am willing to suspend belief up to a point, but this book passed that point as soon as the entire plot came into clarity as one of the main characters began to remember what was going on. I am sorry, but it would be just too much for me to swallow even if I believed that science could identify individual memories in a person’s brain and sequester them without doing the same to the neighboring memory. I would be more specific but I try to never include spoilers in my reviews.

Some of the book is quite interesting as we find out about the history of the individuals involved, but that takes up a small part of an incredibly long story which I would have found far more interesting if it had been subject to some decent editing. This might well have been a good 11 or 12 hour book, but 19 hours is just too long for this story and I lost interest about half way through. I almost gave up on it and moved to the next book in my wish list, but thought that if I waited long enough perhaps something worthwhile might show up. I was wrong and, as an added bonus, this is the first book in a series.

On the positive side, the narration was quite good with distinct voices, regional accents and an involved narrator. A pity the book was not up to the quality of the narrator.

I hit chapter 74 and could not take it anymore...

Would you try another book from A. G. Riddle and/or Edoardo Ballerini?

Probably not based on this massive waste of time.

What was most disappointing about A. G. Riddle’s story?

Has anybody seen the missing plot? Anybody? At Chapter 74 and still no plot. But my head hurts from the excessively repeated character "development". Enough already! This is the problem with books that are planned as a series. Way too much time is spent stretching things out.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

He could have read twice as fast. It's my own fault for not doubling the speed. That might have helped the reader sound better doing female voices. He was horrible at that. It was very distracting.

Could you see Pandemic being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Definitely a TV series. In fact, I think it was written with that in mind so that episodes could stretch through 5 seasons...

Any additional comments?

I am going to start giving more weight to negative Amazon reviews and less to 5 star reviews. Obviously, there is a taste issue going on here.

a technology twist to a familiar plot

It was interesting most of the way through, then when the technology entered in, it got a bit unbelievable. The wrap up at the end is simplistic and pat. Even then, not everything is resolved so a sequel is required and guaranteed. And it's hard to decide how to feel about some of the people. It was hard to keep some of the characters clear; their names are even too similar--Elliott, Elim, Milam. Elliott started out in an important position and then lost it, so it was not clear why he was important to the story.

Mr. Ballerini does well of course, but the women's voices weren't always clear.

Boring and not plausible.

struggled to finish. it was just kinda boring. Too much back - from- the - dead silly coincidences.

Creighton it is NOT

Someone said in a review "equal to Creighton" NOT EVEN CLOSE. The mistakes regarding routine medical treatment, science/biology in general are so annoying as to disrupt thee story entirely. For example the incorrect sequence using an AED, lack of understanding of consequences of smoke inhalation the list is endless. The action scenes were ok but really the whole storyline was poorly executed.

Boring and dragged out

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

A story

Would you ever listen to anything by A. G. Riddle again?

Nope

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Narrator was the only redeeming part

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Disappointment - there was so much hype about the book

Extremely silly-as if written as a parody

No character development, incoherent plot, ridiculous coincidences--like a chain novel in which the authors of each successive chapter try to outdo the others in terms of trite dialogue and meaningless action ( "We had guns and missiles in the last chapter--now let's have guns, missiles, bombs, and a plane running out of gas!")

On and on and on

I couldn’t wait for it to be over with. I know I could have stopped at any time but after so many hours spent with it I’d have felt like a quitter, silly me.

Much Much More...

When I first chose to listen to Pandemic I was a little concerned that this was going to be another one of those 'virus outbreaks - followed by a race to find the cure' sort of stories. Wow, I was happlily proved wrong!
There is so much more to this story, as layer after layer is revealed, and the story twists and turns until the very end. The premise of the story could easily be straight out of a Bond story, however the book is much more complex, and to describe it as such just wouldn't do it justice.
This is highly recommended, and I'll certainly be listening to more from A.G. Riddle.
Top performance from Edoardo Ballerini too. First time I've listened to his narration, and I'd put him right up there with Audibles best.

Hilariously bad

This is a bad book. It felt like the author wrote a spy thriller, and a book about a pandemic, then thought to themselves "Why not?!" and mashed them awkwardly together. This does not work as a coherent story. People are able to take part in action sequences whilst suffering an Ebola like illness that kills in days. None of the logistics in the book work. I do not feel bad about returning this book, given that the author did not feel bad about cutting and pasting from other sources (seriously, the section on air bnb in Germany is lifted straight from a guide book. It made me genuinely laugh out loud).
The only points this book gets is for the narration, which was decent.

Awful comic book crud

I can find nothing positive to say about this boo.k. Basically it is just badly written. Wooden dialogue spoken by plastic comic book characters., with a breathy theatrical narration.
Much of the 'tale' is told through the cast narrating events to other members in long dialogues, tedious and lazy. Amazed that i stuck in thereb so long, under all the crud there is the hint of the possibility of an inteesting plot, but in the end - five hours still to go- I was losing the will to live.

Don’t focus too much on credibility!

It’s a bit of a ‘B movie’ of a book, with dubious dialogue, contrived character back stories, and an impossible timeline, but... I really quite enjoyed it!

I had to laugh out loud at the narrators’ Australian accent (verging on South African at times!), but he did passable English accents. I also had to laugh out loud at some of the lines delivered by the characters, who seemed to only speak in profound, life affirming sentences. In fact I think I laughed at quite a bit of it, but it definitely held my attention until the end.

If you’re looking for quality fiction this isn’t it. If you like a bit of cheese with your literature, and you don’t feel the need to overanalyse the storyline, you’ll probably enjoy this.

Too complex with too many impossible coincidences.

I found it just annoying in the end. Constantly going back in history to create excessively detailed back stories for new characters that appeared from nowhere. Really quite predictable in lots of ways. It ended up being a a battle of wills. Me against the book. I didn't enjoy it, I endured it.

Sadly not for me.

Boring, slow, tedious and life is too short! Absolute waste of time and a credit...will be returning. Needs edited to get rid of half the padding. Gave up!

not sure why this is a best seller just so obvious

It Started off ok but you soon start thinking hang on a minute weren't they infected a few chapters back why don't the main charictors seem to die .
By halfway through you just think oh ok so none of the main charictors die no matter what ,i can live with that but then the story just drivels on and on i think they should have cut a third of the book out and kept it sharp and snappy about controlling a virus, but then i suppose it had to lay the ground work for other books with james bond bad guys and secret enemy bases as well as flying all over the world in what feels like minutes .
There are sombre good bits in the plot .
I don't read allot of fiction but there is much better than this .

Good start but couldn't finish it

I enjoyed the start of the book detailing the response to the outbreak but then got completely lost in (and bored by) detailed back stories and implausible plot points. I didn't manage to finish. I thought the narrator did his best with poor material.

Loved it!

This was my first audio book experience, and I loved it! The storyline was great, with some really strong character. The narration was really impressive too, and I soon learnt to distinguish which character was which, by the tone of voice and accent use. I'm really looking forward to listening to the next book in the series.

What to do with you?

This book is similar to previous Atlantis trilogy - in both the plot and characters creation. With is both good and bad - to mine personal opinion I enjoy the story - not so much characters - creation is better than previous A.G R books but still need some improvement :). Some said in review that it not feel plausible - and sadly I have to agree with that - to minie opinion that does not mean that you can't have fun reading it - I sure did. If you liked previous A.G. R. book (as I did) you should liked this one - but is in the same level (overall) as Atlantis trilogy - you will not get disappointment but I would keep expectation as I said on the same level as Atlantis books. IMHO i would expect more form this author -since i liked his previous creations - and this is why i gave 4 stars instead of 5.