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.

A great start to an amazing series.

I disagree with several of the reviews posted here, but that is the beauty of opinions, we all get to have them. I am a huge fan of Zombie Apocalypse novels, movies, and TV shows. This book holds it's own against some of the best out there.

I especially enjoyed having the book set in an area I was not familiar with, as it added a tourist feeling to the overall experience. The story is very original, and does not follow some of the standard Zombie tropes that are so often over used. The characters are well developed and fun to join the journey with, including Lucullus the cat.

One of the reviewers said he felt like the author was writing about things he didn't understand using guns as an example, but the author is not the narrator, the main character is, and he admits that he doesn't know these things. To me that adds realism. I am very tired of people in ZomPoc tales who have never fired a gun turning into a Ramboesque soldier of fortune in stressful world ending situations. In reality the only thing they would be able to magically load with no training at all is their pants!

I say give this book a shot, and if your goal is to approach an old idea with new eyes then you will most likely enjoy it as much as I have. I have even reread the series twice to go back and pick up on little things I may have missed, and enjoyed it even more the second time around. I can't say that about most of the books with authors unknown to me that I have gambled on with Audible.

Not bad, more than I expected

Didn't realize at the onset that this was a Spanish translation but overall it was a good listen if you are into the apocalyptic zombie thing. The narrator is decent enough to keep your interest and has good voice inflection when the situation calls for it.

Decent story for zombie Apocalypse

Easy to listen to and get lost in the day to day telling of survival.

Zombies, oh my!

I confess when I first saw that this was a spanish translated novel, based in another country I had my doubts. those were quickly erased as I listened to the story. The writer is witty & caputured the isolation, loneliness & terror of being virtually the last man on earth. as him and his cat make his journey searching for fellow members that may still be alive it is a captivating journey that I throughly enjoyed.

Rolled my eyes a lot

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Plot often felt contrived.

What could Manel Loureiro have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Too much cat.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

I really like end of the world stuff, so probably.

Excellent book!

I really enjoyed listening to this audiobook! I liked the characters and there were just enough twists and turns in the story to make it entertaining. Fans of this genre will probably complain that a lawyer wouldn't be capable of surviving a zombie apocalypse but I suggest you just let it go and go with the flow of the book. It was realistic to a certain point and really after that it's just an imaginary case study into human behavior.

The survival of all humanity

The story gets off to a bad start but turns into a very good entertaining finish.

took care of my fix

Any additional comments?

ok so this guy, the guy in this story is crazy annoying. like, sometime he's super heroic, other times he's totally fall down, curl into a ball. you can tell right off that this story is translated into english. if you can get over that its a pretty good listen. also, the main character is always crying over his cat, thorwing up out of fear, complaining about who knows what. its more annoying than anything.

Something just didn't click

What did you like best about The Beginning of the End? What did you like least?

The story was okay, a bit contrived from the start, but not bad. Every now and then, though, the author would say something that made no sense, or even contradicted something else he said. An armored car that couldn't run down zombies because the main character has "seen what bodies do to cars?" Meh.

What do you think your next listen will be?

Not the rest of this series.

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

I haven't listened to the narrator's other performances, but he did a fine job. A little trouble with some of the Spanish place names, but no real problem.

Could you see The Beginning of the End being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

No.

Any additional comments?

What was in the darn case that burned up?! He spends half the book going after this case and...nothing??

More survival than zombies, but still fun

Written in an epistolary style, this book focuses on the individual survival of one man from the outset of epidemic symptoms across the globe. The first quarter of the book touches on geo-political responses to the crisis, of which not much information is available. The book was originally written in Spanish and the entirety of the plot takes place in Spain.

Although this is my first 'Zombie' book, I have watched almost every available movie and television series, so I'm not new to the genre. This book is a simple survival tale with zombies only being the point of conflict as opposed to the overall plot as in 'World War Z' or 'Walking Dead'.

The Narrator was excellent and I would definitely listen to him again. Only four stars for the story as it doesn't meet my 'mind blown' paradigm, but it was fun and there's some out of the box thinking that occurs.