Zombie Rules: Zombie Rules, Book 1

Publisher's Summary

Rick, an aging Vietnam veteran, alcoholic, and prepper, convinces Zach Gunderson that the apocalypse is on the horizon. The two of them take refuge at a remote farm. As the zombie plague rages, they face a terrifying fight for survival. They soon learn, however, that the walking dead are not the only monsters.

©2013 David Achord (P)2015 Tantor

JUST BECAUSE I'M CRAZY, DON'T MEAN

I'VE LOST MY MIND
I am Impatient and with many books and, I only get through three hours. I did listen to all 10+ hours of this, which says much. I bought the book, months ago but was not that excited to listen. Think I was put off by the cover and the reviews. It is not a bad book, and if the sequels go on sale, I will read on.

I REALIZED THEY WERE QUITE PREDICTABLE
This starts out as a YA book. Kid is a sophomore in High School, has crush on girl, Jock steals girl away from him, and than beats him up. This has a today twist of the beating going viral on U-tube. We are a couple of hours into the book before any Zombies appear. About once every other hour a Zombie wonders on to the scene, as if the writer went , Oh ya, this is called Zombie Rules. The rules are everything you already know about Zombies if you have read one other Zombie book. While I enjoyed the book, I had problems with the main character being a teenager and all these older men make him their leader. The prepper is an older man who magically makes Zach his friend, yet Zach is the one with the mature head on his shoulder and the one that solves all problems. The Zombies, were the same old Zombies and rarely even made an appearance. The kid has no raging hormones and kisses his girlfriend on the head a lot. The rules are like, Thanks Captain Obvious. There also seems to be a preoccupation with bodily functions. I know we all fart, relieve are bowels, take a leak and girls have menstrual periods and use tampons, but not sure why we constantly have to be reminded about it.

PAYBACKS ARE A BITCH
I know the narrator was good, cause I never ever thought of him. In most of my reviews I like to make a comment about the narrator. It was not until I got to the right now, that I realized that someone read the book to me. You can't get better than that.

33 of 45 people found this review helpful

Teenage Wish Fulfillment Drivel

Where to begin?

The story is 'apocalypse by the numbers'.
Characters are so thin that if they turned sideways they'd vanish.
The writing varies in quality from painful to facepalm and stops at all points in between.
The dialogue especially is staggeringly bad.
Our hero, a teenager, knows absolutely everything about everything (astrology, history, farming, tactics and on and on), and is as adept at showing up teachers with his scholarly skills as he is grizzled old veterans with his planning and military acumen.
I cannot think of a single redeeming feature about this, except that the narrator does a creditable job which the material.
Women are useless in the apocalypse it seems.
At one point a character trades honey for used women's underwear. No, I'm not making this up but Iam getting miserable trying to review this. Honestly, it's utter drivel, so bad it could almost be a parody but it's just not that self-aware.
Try the Mountain Man books, or The Remaining books, but avoid this.

55 of 79 people found this review helpful

awesome

its a great read. i love the whole story and how its read. you wont be disappointed

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Very entertaining

I started with book three, which was fine as a standalone book but going Bach and reading book 1 has been so much fun. I think they are very well written, I particularly enjoy the dialogue and how the narrator brings the characters to life. Very satisfying. Don't listen to the haters.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Love this series.

I rarely get hooked into a book series like I have this one. I've listened to it multiple times, which is another rarity. I would absolutely recommend.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Zombie apocalypse or YA novel?

Not too shabby. Smart main character, for a 16 year old. Didn't expect the buggary 5 minutes in, but that didn't form a pattern. Step 1 for being a zombie apocalypse survivor: Be a prepper. Step 2: Hole up in your isolated farm. Step 3: Don't go into Nashville...

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Good book, just need to keep the storyline in order

This book was pretty interesting to listen to. Like many zombie books, this one ran over a few of the basics in survival following Z-Day, however this book gave a new perspective. Some of the things the characters discussed in the book are thing s that I haven't seen in other books, heck I hadn't thought of a few of them myself. That was quite refreshing and gave me something to to think about when it comes to zombies.
My only real complaint about this book concerns chronology. Randomly throughout the story, the main character will give us a bit of information, only to later learn that he had no business knowing such information until much later. Perfect example, Z tells us the back story about Righteous Rick was given to us at least a chapter or two before he even learns about it. It gives he sense that you missed something or that the book is skipping.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Good Solid Zombie Title

No Nazi’s… No clowns… No God v Satan… Just a good solid traditional end of the world zombie story which is bound to keep you wanting more!

I had not heard of the author or the narrator before, but I will be sure to look for them in the future. The narration matched the characters perfectly. The speed of the narration was best played at 1.25x which in turned only shorted the total listening time a little.

I couldn’t but help think of another of my favourite zombie series ‘The Beginning of the End: Apocalypse Z’ when listening to this one. I just hope the second in the series doesn’t go down the same path of Apocalypse Z did. Not that it would be too bad if it did, but it is refreshing not read of some new even more crazy thing than the zombies.

What I did find interesting was unlike many in this genre, the author seems to be very restrained in describing disturbing details… forced sex scenes for example don’t have too many details.

This one really gets two thumbs up from me. It will provide hours of listening pleasure on a long travel to work. In fact I liked it so much I purchased the second in the series before I even finished the first!

20 of 31 people found this review helpful

I didn't even finish this book

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

I did not enjoy this book at all. The writing is poor, the characters are annoying and unbelievable, and nothing really exciting actually happens. The main character is a young teenager who, a few weeks in to the zombie apocalypse, becomes a sniper, expert at hand to hand combat, expert at survival, as well as a battle-hardened badass. The explanation that he's exceptionally intelligent just doesn't begin to cover why he's suddenly able to cut people's throats and shoot out kneecaps from afar. The beginning of the book treats every female character as a walking set of breasts, nothing more. The women are either stupid or manipulative, but you will hear the main characters refer to getting "pus*y" over and over again. One of the men even admits that he likes to have sex with women, he just doesn't particularly like their company. This is a common trope in sci-fi and horror, but it gets a little wearing. I didn't even finish the book, as I realized about 3/4 of the way through that I didn't care what happened to these people.

Has Zombie Rules: Zombie Rules, Book 1 turned you off from other books in this genre?

No

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

The narrator was great

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Irritation, boredom

Any additional comments?

I realize I'm in the minority that don't like this book. For a good zombie series listen to The Remaining. You will not be disappointed.

11 of 17 people found this review helpful

Awesome zombie tail

absolutely one of the best zombie stories I have listened to. kept me engage the whole time. Character were very easy to like, couldn't stop listening.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Great listen

Well worth buying, really enjoyed it, can't wait to get next one in the series.
I thoroughly recommend this book.

7 of 7 people found this review helpful

A great first book

This is s great first book. Anyone with an interest in zombies, or just a well written book with interesting characters, will love this book. The type of book where you will immediately go "I want to get book two."

Compliments to the narrator for brining the characters to life.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

Don't waste your money!!

I am an avid fan of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead and other post-apocalyptic novels so was really looking forward to this book. What a disappointment!! In fact, don't waste your money. It lacks any sense of drama in the situation whatsoever. In fact the narrator might as well be describing a dreary Sunday afternoon drive in the countryside. I also agree with one of the earlier reviews. The writer's constant references to sex and to women's bodies really begins to irritate, and actually becomes a bit disgusting in the end. There is one description, the killing of their first zombie where the two main protagonists proceed to describe the zombie's body and her breasts! Not nice at all.
A completely lost opportunity!

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Creepy, not in a good way

I can't believe the good reviews this has got, the author's creepy obsession with young teenage girls is made even worse by the fact that he's a middle aged man (google him), I assumed this was written by a frustrated teenager. Unless you're a misogynist or a teenage boy I would avoid at all costs.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Ticks almost all the zombie novel boxes..

Good, well laid out concept which rolls along at a great pace. This is the first book of a series and I'll be straight onto the second. Well narrated and produced...

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Good book

I loved the premise, but i felt like when the grandma died and his girlfriend left him it didnt really have a point to the story, seems like he just moved on immediatly.

An interesting take on the concept, but a juvenile and unrealistic one.

I love zombie fiction, and I love it even more when it’s made more ‘realistic’ through background information and the character development due to the circumstances they find themselves in. This book had such great promise from the beginning but fell far short in my opinion.

Every other chapter feels like a misogynistic indictment of the world, with so many references to breasts and sexual fantasies that it really detracts from the serious nature of the story. I understand that the main character is a young man who no doubt would have these urges, but when every woman is summed almost immediately as a potential sexual object, and every other male is a supposed rapist or pervert, it cheapens their characters and drops the main character down quite a few points for having to go to that place. It felt cringe-worthy, and just unnecessary at every point.

Zack is a very unrealistic character too, going from a timid kid to a seasoned killer who actually murders someone without needing to do so before the outbreak even occurs. There would be a much steeper learning curve than described in the book, yet Zack is able to shoot people “right between the eyes” from dramatic distances multiple times, and never seems to come to terms with the fact he’s a murderer. His know-it-all attitude gets boring very fast too, and I imagine if I came across a child who corrected me on everything, or had this inane amount of trivia on the most obscure things that he has to spout constantly, I would be tempted to serve him up to the undead.

It feels like the author may have been a bullied school kid, someone who was looked over by women in his life, and is taking it out on the world with contrived characters who can’t handle themselves or even act like normal human beings until the ‘hero’ swoops in and saves the day. Every woman is either an opportunist, or a slut, and it feels like Zack’s condemnation of them is all that is supposed to matter, without any real indication as to why they’re supposedly this way, or why any strong and independent women have survived the outbreak. Every man he comes across, apart from the ones he wants to keep around as father figures, is a threat and a creep which gets tiring fast. Nobody seems to be self sufficient until a 16 year old nerd comes along and saves their skin. There’s also many tones of racism in the descriptions of characters of colour, and as a mixed race man I found that exhausting and disappointing, let alone close minded.

I would have loved this story to have had much more depth, realism and grit, but this was clearly written for those with similar experiences in their early lives, and without having a jaded view of humanity it becomes a chore to go through. The narrator did a good job of keeping the characters separate and free flowing, but there’s only so much polish you can apply to a turd.

wicked

the narrator was awesome that story is great love the detail and how well developed the characters

Awsome

Really enjoyed this book well written and beautifully narrated already for the next one ready

extremely good read

Excellent description, excellent description of caracters personalities. Very good read.
Highly recommended. The tell of Zah working hard to build a community in Zombie word and beeing crush by guverment forces

1 of 3 people found this review helpful