The Beginning of the End

Apocalypse Z, Book 1

By: Manel Loureiro, Pamela Carmell - translator

Narrated by: Nick Podehl

Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

The dead rise…

A mysterious incident in Russia, a blip buried in the news - it’s the only warning humanity receives that civilization will soon be destroyed by a single, voracious virus that creates monsters of men.

Humanity falls…

A lawyer, still grieving over the death of his young wife, begins to write as a form of therapy. But he never expected that his anonymous blog and journal would ultimately record humanity’s last days.

The end of the world has begun…

Governments scramble to stop the zombie virus, people panic, so-called Safe Havens are established, the world erupts into chaos; soon it’s every man, woman, and child for themselves. Armed only with makeshift weapons and the will to live, this survivor will give mankind one last chance against…Apocalypse Z.

©2012 Manel Loureiro (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

I Kept Waiting For It To End

The story - it was good but it was sort of like 4 different adventures tied together by the main character, who could have been different in each one. Each of the adventures had a beginning, middle and an end. Each time it got to the end, I would check the spot in the recording, wondering if that was it. Not a bad thing exactly, but except for the main character and his cat (??) there were no other constants in the story.

The author did a good job of telling the story - not riveting compared to some other zombie stories, but maybe that was lost in the translation somehow.

Of course the narrator was great; I think I could listen to him read the menu at McDonalds.

Was fine until the underaged girl showed up..

The good-

I enjoyed listening to the first half (or maybe 75%) of the audiobook. I love zombie stories that have a normal person rather than focusing on some "badass" macho man or the military, which is why this was recommended to me. I also enjoyed that it starts at the very beginning of the pandemic, so you get to ride along as things go from rumors to panic. The action is great and it was easy to imagine it all happening. As time goes on, the characters get weak from lack of food, get injured, and barely get by. It's a refreshing, realistic detail that i appreciate as so many other stories will have characters get severely injured and then somehow ignore their injuries and are still able to fight a horde of zombies with no consequences.

On to the bad-
The author is quite repetitive in the words and phrases he uses and it can get a little annoying.

*LIGHT SPOILERS BELOW*

Now for the VERY BAD-
At a certain point in the story, the main character finds a teenage girl survivor (he literally calls her a girl, acknowledges that she's maybe 16, 17). As he describes her, it gets grosser and grosser, especially considering he continues calling her a girl the whole time. As soon as he started describing her body and used the phrase "perky breasts", I had to stop. The main character is an adult man, maybe like 30s? It feels like the author just inserted his own creepy fantasy into the story. As a woman, I have NO interest in hearing about how sexy a child is. It's such lazy writing to immediately sexualize a girl/woman in the first minute of the character's introduction. I've come to expect it in these types of books, especially since they tend to be only written by men, but having a grown man sexualizing and romancing a child is beyond what I can stomach.

Enjoyed It More Than I Thought

Ok, it's about zombies, but it is actually a pretty good story. I can't give it 5 stars because....well...it is about zombies. This isn't my usual genre, but I really enjoyed it. The narrator does a great job. Just seems like he should have a little bit of an accent since he is Spanish, but you get over that quickly as the story progresses. I would highly recommend. I liked it well enough that I got the next in the series and started it today.

Great start to a three book series.

Absolutely loved this book. It didn't feel like a typical zombie story and I loved the main characters cat that follows him through his adventures and trials. I highly recommend giving this story a listen.

Gem of a story!

I thought I had found all the good apocalypse stories on Audible but this one has surprised me!

Mr. Lucky meets zombies

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

It's a different perspective on zombie apocalypse.

What other book might you compare The Beginning of the End to and why?

Any journal style book

What does Nick Podehl bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

A good mix of characters.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I laughed, but I never felt like crying.

You have to love a good zombie book

I think the narrator did a wonderful job with this book. I really enjoyed listening to him and his different takes on the characters. I enjoyed his style enough that I may look for more books he does as well.

This was a great tale of a person trying to survive a zombie apocalypse. The problems that he runs into along the way make things very difficult in an already difficult world. The book is basically about a man that decides to try and survive the plague that has hit the world hard and he has try to avoid the infected while finding supplies and searching for other survivors.

I only have 1 complaint with the book and its why it lost a full star from me. There was way to much descriptions of everything in this book. I honestly think this book could have been an hour or more shorter without all those excessive descriptions. Every zombie encounter was way over described for me. I really didnt need to know the description of every single zombie they encountered as it seemed to drag each encounter on and on and on. I get that the author was trying to give you the feel of the terror our adventurer was seeing but it was just to much for me.

Loved it

I very much enjoyed this book. It popped up in recommended and I'm glad I tried it. Plus the narrator's voice was very easy to listen to.

Very Entertaining

I really liked the book. The only think that got to me were a couple things that the author clearly didn't fact check first. A Glock doesn't have a safety. There were a couple other fun related items that took m me out of the story because it just didn't sound correct. But as you can see I still rate it very high. Part of the high reading is due to the reader, he does a very good job.

Not bad...not great, but not bad.

This was an average zombie book. What a strange sentence. Haha.... Seriously, this was not the best book I have read in this genre, but it was not the worst, either. The story was a little strange, and quite a bit of suspension of reality is needed, but the characters were pretty good, and fairly consistent. The cat bothered me. To be in such a perilous situation and be so concerned for a cat; not my kind of thing. I'm sure there are those out there who will love this book precisely for that reason, though. To each his own. The narration was good, and helped make this a better experience.