The Undead Situation

By: Eloise J. Knapp

Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins

Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

When the end finally occurred, everything about it was cinematic. The dead came back and ate people, civilization collapsed, and no one could do a thing. But Cyrus V. Sinclair couldn’t care less; he’s a sociopath.

Amidst the chaos, Cyrus sits back and contemplates the gore stained streets and screams of his fellow man with little more emotion than one of the walking corpses. With his cache of guns and MREs, he rather likes the idea of hunkering down in his Seattle apartment while the world ends outside.

All is well and good for Cyrus… until he meets up with Gabe, a belligerent annoyance, and the other inconvenient survivors who cramp his style and force him to re-evaluate his outlook on life. It’s Armageddon, and things will definitely get messy.

BONUS SHORT STORY: The Undead Situation includes "Strictly Professional", one of four interlocking stories from The Junkie Quatrain by Peter Clines.

©2010 Eloise J. Knapp (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Pleasantly different but a bit of a snore.....

While this book introduced a new and fairly original take on our lead character, it lacked excitement, suspense and action for me. I was right into the idea of a sociopath becoming our ant-hero protagonist but his actions and thoughts were pretty disturbing.

I felt this book was far less a zombie-apocalyse than it was about human nature and the sheer ugliness of people. It came across to me that the author wanted to shed light on the faults in diagnosing oneself and characterizing our own behaviour in broad, general terms. When our anti-hero decides he is evil, he acts out in evil, sick ways.

I can give credit however, to the complexity of his character and his development throughout the book. A transformation of sorts takes place within him and he eventually acts human. Maybe this book was never meant to be about zombies, but the living deadness and anti-social behaviours of people with these types of personality disorders. In this case, the purpose of the un-dead apocalypse was to turn a "dead man" into a living one.

With that being said, the plot itself was STRONGLY centred on this man's thoughts and not much actually happens in this book in terms of action and survival. The zombies feel as more of a back-drop for the characters.

I rated this 3*** stars overall because I did enjoy most of it and it kept me going in order to finish the book. Narration was excellent and writing was superb.

---If the darkness of the human mind interests you, it is likely you will find this worth the credit. If you're looking for a solid zombie tale....not here.

ok

narrator sounded like christian slater lol - book was ok - but it wasn't gory zombie guys n blood - it was more about a sociopath who learned he can love.... very little zombie action

Unique Zombie Tale

Since the dead began to rise, not much has changed in Cyrus V. Sinclair’s life beyond the fact that he doesn’t have to go to work anymore. Cyrus was expecting some sort of apocalypse to come in his lifetime and was prepared for it. Now he sits in his fortified apartment, watching the undead take over his city as if it was some sort of movie. Yet, when forced to save the life of a young girl, Cyrus must reevaluate his decision to ride out the apocalypse in his apartment, and heads out into a changed and brutal world. The Undead Situation really doesn’t add much new to the zombie apocalypse genre. Knapp’s zombies are basically Romero style, and the assortment of Survivors that pepper the land fall into your typical apocalyptic types. Yet, where Knapp excels is her ability to filter stereotypical apocalyptic scenarios through the eyes of a couple of incredibly unique characters. Her characters are not especially likable, and only heroic if it serves their purpose, but they are immensely compelling. Cyrus reminded me a lot of the Heather’s character JD in the early stages of the novel, but just when you feel you are truly beginning to understand him, something changes. As a narrator, Cyrus is highly unreliable, his inner dialogues capable of suddenly revealing a side of himself that even he hadn’t realized was there. Yet, The Undead Situation isn’t just a character study, it’s full of a lot of fun action that any zombie fiction fan will enjoy. The Undead Situation will please fans of classic zombie tales with familiar apocalyptic situations, but will also offer something for those looking for a twist to their zombie lore by allowing the reader to view those situations through the skewed eyes of her main character.

I think a big reason I associated Cyrus with JD from Heathers was based on the narration of Kevin T. Collins. It almost seemed as if his was channeling the voice and cadence of Christian Slater, giving it a bit of a twist, and presenting it as the voice of Cyrus and for me this tactic, if intentional, was brilliantly done. Collins does what first person narrators should do by creating a voice appropriate for his character and maintaining it throughout the reading. Collins also handled the many peripheral characters well, both male and female. The Undead Situation works very well as an audiobook, and was one of the bigger surprises for me in Audible’s zombie celebration. Luckily, Knapp has set up the novel for an obvious sequel, and I will be looking for it with great anticipation.

Overall - a decent zombie book

The story is a typical zombie book - a guy sets out for a destination and is thwarted by various zombie attacks and people doing bad things while en route. No big world-domination plots being uncovered here (check out Grant's Newsflesh series if you like these wide-scope type of plots).

What isn't typical is that it's actually quite well-written. There's not much moralizing in it, and while there are lots of stereotypes (why must so many post-apocalypses include men herding women for rape?), the main characters actually stand out. They don't try to save the world, just themselves, and don't have a woe-is-me outlook. Of course, they aren't nice people, but at least they're not really trying to hurt anyone while they make their way from point A to point B.

The ending was a bit odd. I guess it fit the story and was probably the only way to end this novel (it couldn't very well have been all sunshine and roses, now could it). Overall, it was a decent zombie book with very good narration and a good (unrelated) short-story added on at the end.

If you're looking for read-a-likes: similar in plotting (but not as violent) is Reapers are the Angels and similar in tone would be the Day by Day Armageddon series.

Enjoyable performance but so-so story

While I loved the performance by Mr. Collins, the story itself had a few loose ends. I'm assuming the author is setting things up for a sequel (which I hope is the case) because the way some of the characters' actions were described it left me wondering what would happen next without an explanation. I won't go into too many details but the way a couple characters "disappeared" from the story made no sense. Also, some of the back story of Cyrus didn't gel. It may just be me, but I felt as if this guy was made to be able to do anything and everything and it was a little far fetched. But the story is enjoyable and if readers don't over analyze the way I do then TUS is a fun ride from start to finish.

Not the best zombie book.

As zombie books go this one was just ok for me. The performance was good but the story was kind of week and had a lot of loose ends that never get tied together. Just an average story with a good narrator.

A different method of Zombie story telling....

I really enjoyed this book. The main character was wickedly fascinating and you just don't know whether to love or hate him. All the components for a good zombie apocalypse story are here....but for a change, the main character isn't a selfless superman wannabe. If it's not in my top 5 - it's close! Worth a credit!

WHEW...WILD RIDE...TOTALLY IMMERSED IN THE STORY

Would you listen to The Undead Situation again? Why?

Yep, I would listen to this one again

What other book might you compare The Undead Situation to and why?

hmmm, it's of the horror, zombie genre but so much more...absolutely awesome twist to the 'normal' z storylines

What does Kevin T. Collins bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

what a perfect voice for the main character--totally believable...lol if you believe in psycho zombie killers

Any additional comments?

Get this...you will not regret it.

Not what i thought, but okay

Any additional comments?

I purchased this book because the premise sounded fascinating -- a sociopath in a zombie world. But Cyrus was not much of a sociopath. He was terribly boring, childish, and surprisingly normal. I found Blaze way more interesting than Cyrus. I thought Cyrus would be this killing machine with absolutely no conscience or remorse, but, well, sadly that was not the case. Blaze was the real sociopath here, not Cyrus. The other thing that I found annoying was that the situations kept repeating themselves. The group makes a stupid decision, comes upon danger, fights their way out, moves on, makes a stupid decision, comes upon danger, fights their way out, moves on, rinse and repeat. The only saving grace of this book was that the author is a very good writer and the reader was also very good. The story was fun enough. The character of Blaze was also pretty fascinating - I would love to read a book about her backstory.

different

I haven't listened to many zombie books before, but this one was cool. The main character was different from the heroes I see in movies, other books, etc. Plot was pretty straightforward, but I didn't mind.

Great voice actor, loved the Southern accent for Frank.