Rise

A Newsflesh Collection

By: Mira Grant

Narrated by: John Glouchevitch, Nicholas Guy Smith

Length: 24 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's Summary

Collected here for the first time is every piece of short fiction from New York Times best seller Mira Grant's acclaimed Newsflesh series, with two new never-before published novellas and all eight short works available for the first time.

We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, a man-made virus taking over bodies and minds, filling them with one, unstoppable command...feed.

Mira Grant creates a chilling portrait of an America paralyzed with fear. No one leaves their houses and entire swaths of the country have been abandoned. And only the brave, the determined, or the very stupid, venture out into the wild.

Contents:

• Countdown
• Everglades
• Sand Diego 2014
• How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea
• The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell
• Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus
• All the Pretty Little Horses
• Coming to You Live

More from Mira Grant:

Newsflesh

• Feed
• Deadline
• Blackout
• Feedback
• Rise

©2016 Mira Grant (P)2016 Hachette Audio

So Glad to get a chance to hear these read

Any additional comments?

I'm so glad to hear these stories read. I've loved the Newsflesh world since I first got a chance to read Feed, when it was donated to our local library by orbit as part of the marketing push right before Deadline came out.

Mira Grant is a writer who puts such loving detail into each of her characters, and I'm honestly a sucker for oral history/epistolary novel combos. And oh how I love zombies. Which has made my continued worsening vision a bane, as you can usually never get the short stories and novellas an author writes in audiobook format. But now, I get to hear them all in a days worth of reading bliss.

I'm only about six hours in, so I may come back to edit later, but I can already say that both the readers do an amazing job. And to anybody who like me finds multiple people playing different parts in an audio book distracting, not to worry. Each narrator takes on a complete short story or novella. Depending on if the story is narrated primarily by a woman or a man.

Rise up while you still can!

Any additional comments?

Countdown - I read this before I got this and I really enjoyed the audiobook version :)

"Everglades" - I never had read this before and I thought it was strange but I liked it.

San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats - I read this a few times as an ebook and it was great having it read to me. I'm spoiled and wish I could have all of her work read to me now.

How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea - I had never gotten around to reading this even though I own the ebook. I really enjoyed this venture into the Newsflesh universe with at least one familiar character.

The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell & Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus -- These two are being lumped together because of the blurbs by the author before these two stories. They really are companion pieces and I loved learning more about the characters in question. I have both of these as ebooks but I had never read Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus and I had thought the Day the Dead came to Show and Tell was really good but now? Listening to it? It was so much more.

All the Pretty Little Horses & Coming to You Live - These two new stories I could have ever asked for! Thank you for these Mira Grant because as a fan I needed these :))

There's not much zombie

For a book that is about the rising of a zombie apocalypse due to a infectious agent, there is very little zombies in these stories. There's also not much action or excitement (outside of the one story about the teacher and her students) I became bored, rather quickly. Shame. Great potential gone to waste.

Great potential, comes up lacking

Main series is great. Narrator is superb and does a stellar job.
However, these additional stories are tedious and, frankly, a slog to get through with all the pointless political asides.
It's like listening to a friend that is fun and creative but has this occasional bitter streak... only the bitter streak is now a mile wide and they cant help themselves anymore. In fact, it's so completely taken over their mental subtext that it just stains everything.
We get you're a progressive... no one cares...
3 stars because the narrator was excellent and the main series doesnt deserve to be diminished by association.

I adore all her books

Especially The Rising zombie series. Finally zombie novels that aren’t formulaic and have an actually reasonable explanation for how zombies came to be and what happened after the rise. I’m not gonna review this one in particular because I’m sure someone else has done that. Suffice it to say I recommend all of them. Including the novellas and shorts. Mira Grant is an excellent.

Flabbergasted

Each of the segments are so uniquely written that whilst they can be read as stand alone accounts the entire Newsflesh series is also so beautifully connected and interrelated it flows amazingly as a large singular account.
Other than that piece of information and that I almost didn't sleep for the entire 25 hours simply because I just couldn't stop, I'm a bit too wrapped up in processing right now to write more. It's truly a must have!!!

Great stuff

If you enjoy the Feed series, I would highly suggest this book. Especially if you have yet to read or listen to any of the short stories contained in this book.

Okay, not great

First, the concept here was solid - originality is hard to come by in this genre, so points for that. This really comes across as several moderate length stories, that are loosely connected. Again, this more or less worked for me. In some areas though, the execution was lacking. One issue was over dramatization - characters behaving in ways that it would be hard to imagine for real people. Another issue was that the author's far left political biases would come through in really unsubtle ways. For example, a character lecturing another that 'all gender is a social construct, and binary gender structures doubly so'. Things like this were sprinkled throughout, and really grated.

In summary, this was pretty decent zombie fiction, but not in the class of the better books in the genre.

most enjoyable

Well, what can I say, I bought the book Feed on a cold winters day on 2013, the next day I was back to my local bookstore to buy Deadline, the day after that...I was ordering Blackout because it wasn't in stock😒.
When it came in it was just as enjoyable as its proceeding books. This anthology filled in most of the blanks, but I wish it would have told the story of what happened in India and how the all important K-A blood test units were created.

Struggled to keep my attention

Too many characters and story plots that do not connect well. I also dislike her writing style.

How nice to see old friends again.

As a huge fan of the Newsflesh series so far I was excited to have all the novellas in one place.

I have read the full series and most of the stories in the rising (aside from don’t taunt the octopus, pretty little horses and coming to you live) but it was a welcome catch up re living the books I have already enjoyed.

The narration is mostly very good. Characters are believable and portrayed very well by all narrators, aside from one character, Dr Kimberly, the supposed Welsh Dr sounded more like a blend of Scottish, Jamaican and Russian I found a little irritating but having such a small part in coming to you live I was able to endure for the benefit of the story.

I recommend having read the original trilogy to truly understand the cast and how the story fits into the newsflesh world but can easily be enjoyed as a stand-alone book especially countdown which is shockingly believable, tragic and exciting.

Aside from one annoying voiceover I really enjoyed my return to the series.

I started this at 4 am on a Tuesday morning (traveling for work) and I finished it at 4:30 pm on Friday (I drive a lot for work) it’s left me craving more.

I think it’s time to start the series all over again!

Really distracting accents from one narrator

The female narrator's attempt at a posh English accent was pretty distracting but I've heard worse. It's not an accent I can do myself so fair enough, messed with my suspension of disbelief though.
However.
If someone is being paid to narrate in an accent they should maybe get some coaching. Or have heard someone speak with the accent.
Near the end of this volume there's a character introduced with the name of Dr Kimberley.
We're told that her accent is Welsh. The accent we hear is usually somewhere between the narrator's posh English accent and that of the character Brenna O'Dell from the Up The Long Ladder episode of TNG.
If you don't remember that episode , the Enterprise has a load of Irish colonisers in the hold. Their behaviour could be described as earthy, and the actor's accents are all over the place, to be kind.
These attempts at Southern Irish accents are the closest I've heard to the 'Welsh' accent of Dr Kimberly, although at least the star trek accents are consistent.
Since Dr Kimberly appeared, I've been writing this review instead of being able to concentrate on the narration.
Which is a bit of a bummer as important stuff is happening to Georgia and Sean Mason.

If accents don't bother you, you might manage OK with the narration.

Superb world building

I started listening to this collection before listening to the Newflesh trilogy. This meant some of the references went over my head on the first listen - it really doesn't matter. The stories work wonderfully as self-contained zombie fiction and as part of the wider pre/post rising world. The author has managed to create a new and exciting zombie (post)apocalypse world and I hope they keep exploring it for a long time to come.
My favourite stories were Countdown (as someone working with viruses I really enjoyed the in-depth explanation of the viruses origins) and The day the dead came to show and tell (I don't think any author I've come across before has given such careful thought to the social consequences of the zombie apocalypse).
The narration is faultless and didn't annoy me once during 24 hours of listening.