• Plague of the Dead

  • The Morningstar Strain, Book 1
  • By: Z. A. Recht
  • Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
  • Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (3,040 ratings)

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Plague of the Dead  By  cover art

Plague of the Dead

By: Z. A. Recht
Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
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Publisher's summary

The end begins with a viral outbreak unlike anything mankind has ever encountered before. The infected are subject to delirium, fever, a dramatic increase in violent behavior, and a one-hundred percent mortality rate. Death. But it doesn't end there. The victims return from death to walk the earth.

When a massive military operation fails to contain the plague of the living dead it escalates into a global pandemic. In one fell swoop, the necessities of life become much more basic. Gone are petty everyday concerns. Gone are the amenities of civilized life. Yet a single law of nature remains: Live, or die. Kill, or be killed. On one side of the world, a battle-hardened General surveys the remnants of his command: a young medic, a veteran photographer, a brash Private, and dozens of refugees, all are his responsibility-all thousands of miles from home. Back in the United States, an Army Colonel discovers the darker side of Morningstar virus and begins to collaborate with a well-known journalist to leak the information to the public...The Morningstar Saga has begun.

©2006 Z.A. Recht (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Featured Article: Mmmm, Brains...Satisfy Your Cravings with the 20 Best Zombie Audiobooks Ever


Zombies have been a potent cultural force for decades. Something about the concept of a ragtag crew of survivors facing off against endless masses of shuffling brain-munchers really seems to speak to people! There are hundreds, if not thousands, of zombie-themed stories out there. But which ones are the very best? And which zombie audiobooks will have you double-checking the locks and sleeping with a baseball bat next to your bed?

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

YOU MIGHT WANT TO PUT DOWN THAT CUP OF COFFEE

A DECEASED AMBULATORY VIRAL HOST
Written in 2006, it would not be fair to say this is the same old same old, even though it is. Since 2006 the Zombie boom has brought us a plethora of Zombies. Now a book that talks about the start of a plague, the slow discovery, the convincing of the public, the government cover up, the fact that you have to shoot a zombie in the head to kill it and everything else we all know like the back of our hand, is boring. The writing is also simplistic.

Now we have Cell by Stephen King, Cattle by Joseph Duncan, The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey, The White Trash Zombie series by Diana Rowland and the Apocalypse series by Peter Meredith, just to name a few. Skip Plague.

P.S. One of the advantages to following someone with your same likes and dislikes, means you get all the reviews, even during a sale. Low reviews get held pending approval, and don't get released until after the sale. Followers get an immediate e-mail, saving them money.

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64 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Slow, unrealistic, a disappointment........

I am a huge fan of zombie literature, but could barely make it through this audio book. The narrator makes every character sound like either a moronic surfer stereotype (the male characters) or an annoying twit (the female characters). The action sequences were slow, using false feeling military jargon spoken by unrealistic military personnel. If this is meant to be a very young adult book, then perhaps it is alright. If you are above the age of 13, then I believe that you will be sorely disappointed as I was.

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44 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Telling not Showing

I couldn't make it through this audiobook. I enjoy tales of apocalypse as much as the next person, but Recht makes the classic hack mistake of telling us everything (how a character is feeling, what the character is like, etc.) instead of showing us through dialogue and description.

If you want a truly superb audiobook of the same variety try Max Brooks' World War Z.

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42 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

A wasted credit....

I was optimistic based upon the reviews and the premise, but the writing was too simple for my taste, and I just couldn't continue the book. The story was cliche' ridden and the characters (not the zombies) were one-dimensional. For ex., I have seen the character that sacrifices himself for his brethren so often in movies/books, but it still can be originally written/portrayed with skill. This books fails to do this. For apocalyptic novels, I would recommend Stephen King's "Cell" McCarthy's "The Road", or Matheson's "I am Legend" to name a few that were so much more satisfying. thanks for letting me share my opinion

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39 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Guilty pleasure

I am not a fan of Zombie books. In the past I bought one (“Day By Day Armageddon”) and, although I enjoyed it, there was too much zombie and not enough story for me. There seemed like only so many ways to describe killing a zombie by shooting it in the head and I found I did not really care much about the people involved.

Given that I am not sure what possessed me to buy “Plague Of The Dead”. I suppose I was browsing and found the rating and reviews of the book to be enough to peak my interest. I ended up buying the book and, much to my surprise, found it difficult to put the book down once I got started. What caught my interest was a book written more like the story of people trying to survive in a world gone mad rather than a sequel of killings of the already sort-of dead. I cared about the people, much of the story line involved the way the world was falling apart and how the characters in the book were trying to survive without the support structures of a normal civilization. It was not just interesting, the story grabbed me from the start and never let go. When I finished the book I immediately bought the next 2 books in the series. I don’t know if the story is a trilogy and hence complete in these 3 books or if there will be more, but I wanted to know what happened to the characters I had met. It is hard to say anything better about a work of fiction than that you become interested in the fate of the characters.

The narration is first class and I am happily through about half of the second book in the series. It feels sort of like a guilty pleasure. If you don’t mind spending your time on “fluff” and you can live with the language you might enjoy it as well.

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22 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Return to Good Bad and the Ugly

What made the experience of listening to Plague of the Dead the most enjoyable?

Finally a Zombie book without a vampire, werewolf, a computer system that becomes self aware

What was one of the most memorable moments of Plague of the Dead?

The battle scenes between the horde of dead and the armed forces

Have you listened to any of Oliver Wyman’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

no

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

No, but truthfully I was not looking for a book about zombies which would 'move me'. I wanted something easy and fun to listen and long enough to fill out the details.

Any additional comments?

I will buying the next in the series!

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21 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Don't do it. Just - just don't.

It's over. Thank God. Mine won't be the only review warning you to turn back, suprised at our own ability to finish this punishment.

The book has a strong first Act. The Morningstar Virus is an interesting take on zombies. Action is well written. There's even a nice crest in the arcs that I suspect was the of the sample the author used to sell the series. It's all downhill from there.

But the characters. There wasn't a line spoken by a main character that didn't make me roll my eyes. The character's decisions make no sense for human beings, let alone veteran soldiers. I could go on at length about why this is a class in how not to write, but I don't want to imply this is so bad it's worth checking out for morbid curiosity.

Do not feed this beast. Starve it of your attention.

Don't open. Dead inside.

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16 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Makes my top 10 Zombie Stories of all time!!

This series is great!! Definitely needs to be a movie series!! This story starts from all these different places and times that are so far apart. But by the second book you see it all coming together for a great finale in book 3 (when it comes out on audio). The narrator did such an awesome job. I think the best narrating i've heard so far. Love the military side of this zombie apocalypse, with the Suez Canal and small pacific Islands. I had fun google earthing while listening to this story. It was like I was following them the whole time. Then the goverment red taping the scientist. Story had alot of escaping, from dirty authorities from hords of zombies. And you think main characters don't die, well not in a apocalypse! Book 1 does not disappoint!!

Big Art

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16 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Great Zombie Read

I couldn't turn my mp3 off with this one. fast paced, exciting, and gripping. very well written for this genre. It's not Nobel Prize winning literature, but if i wanted that i wouldn't have chosen a zombie book! Awesome, awesome book. Well worth my credit! If you like this, definitely get the next one, Thunder and Ashes. Can't wait for the third installment.

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16 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Just too much stupidity...

I can't even give it 3 stars because that would indicate it's average - even if only average for a zombie book - but it's not. The zombies are cool, and the plot could have been tight but there was too... much... stupidity.

"They" (who are they? author never tells us) collect a news-broadcaster, lock her up in a damp cell and torture her like she's Osama himself. Since there was nothing in the story that indicates this character knew ANYTHING significant, this torture is stupid. Even worse is that she "held out" against it - if you know nothing, why hold out? And if you're not a professional terrorist, how could you hold out?

The characters behave stupidly - I assume it's to create some action. For a specific example: a building is being overrun by zombies, and the city is about to fall to zombies and yet a guy in some black-ops organization spends man-power and time to hunt down some other guy who helped the previously mentioned tortured-for-no-reason victim escape. Anyone not brain-damaged would a) escape or b) help in the defense of his nation/family/city/etc. Nobody is going to go hunt down one guy to "teach him a lesson", at least not if you have to wade through thousands of zombies first.

Oh, and there's also the military guy who has qualms about killing someone who is about to turn into a zombie: 'I can't kill him, he's still human' when in about 30 seconds he's going to try to start munching on you.

Hey, did that zombie-wanna-be just LOOK at me? Pass me the gun.

In terms of narration: the stupid characters were narrated as if they were stupid, so was this annoying, or accurate? I think the narrator did a decent job, given the material.

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15 people found this helpful