Michael Stephen Fuchs

This fourteen book series is thrill, after gut-punching thrill, and provided me with over one-hundred-thirty-four hours of listening pleasure. I laughed, cried and had several "Heck Yeah," moments. Most of the characters are explained in-depthly, offering a flashback into their flaws and their warped perspectives, as the zombies evolve and eat up the world. But I really do get sick of Anglo-Saxon authors describing Africa and other countries in less than flattering terms, despite the fact show more that it has been Europeans who ruined most of these locations. I mean, if you're going to call a country and all it's people bad names, at least acknowledge how they got that way - I digress!

The story begins a few years into the apocalypse, thus, we are thrown into the action of tier-one, special-ops, trying, and often failing to carry out a series of last-ditch efforts to save the last pocket of humanity, even as that slice of civilization is being gobbled-up, by a new breed of dead-heads that can think, and possess super-human abilities.

I appreciate the consistency of all the books being narrated by the same gentleman, with his soothing, animated voice (I hate when publishers switch narrators, mid-series). I would have liked more books that dive into the rebuilding process, but I am more than satisfied with the kindness of the author, of not leaving us hanging, and wondering how things turned out, as he took us all the way to the end of the fight for their very existence...SMILE!!!

PS:
If you dig strong females, you will love this series! show less

I know what you are thinking: I have only myself to blame. I mean, I'm reading a zombie book that's a step up from self-published. What was I thinking? Do you really want to know? Really?

I was thinking about urgent care, and the record numbers of people in October trying to be seen for upper respiratory infections.

I was thinking about my upcoming beach vacation, cancelled because my dad has to be hospitalized for a couple of days and then undergo a medical procedure.

I was thinking about, in show more current pop psychology parlance, my attachment-avoidant relationship with humanity.

I might have even been thinking about upcoming elections. Not because I want to, but because the ads are effing unavoidable.
***************

Given my over-full brain, I really wanted something cathartic. Enter zombies. You get to kill off a whole bunch of humanity in satisfyingly horrible but clearly impossible ways (as opposed to real life ways that one does get to witness in an emergency room) and then focus on the efforts of a few to survive both at an individual level and to pull together the splinters of humanity. It's fucking amazing, really; stripping us down to our most basic function: can we work together enough to survive?

Alas, this entry in the genre, a collaboration between one writer that specializes in military-focused stories and another that specializes in post-apocalyptic something-or-another, was a disappointment. I enjoyed the idea of elite, multi-specialty military teams doing targeted missions to recover whatever data there was on vaccines/cures from various companies--this is a premise that actually makes some sense--but the actual storytelling felt awkward. The premise is great--that elite special forces have training to survive in terrible situations:

"But military personnel, especially special operations guys, had been operating in catastrophic vacuums of order and structure for most of their careers. Think Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq during its civil war. Being able to be effective in such wretched, menacing places was much of what it meant to be a special operator. Homer supposed the end of civilization really just supercharged what had always been the main human problem – working together to survive. The civilians had been shielded from that for a long time."

But authorial skill limited the development of such a great concept. As we jumped from one character to another, it started to feel a little 'samesies.' Like each person was just a military dude that gave up a personal life to become an elite. It made for some awkward info-dumping that allowed the author to show-up knowledge about elite military divisions but not so much about personality traits. There is a token woman, and interestingly, what we learn is that she is having sex with someone and the rest of the guys speculate who. There's also a Muslim who is, of course, very religious and will say last rites, etc (because to be Muslim is to be religious?). There's a couple of guys that are huge and like to intimidate other men through their size. And that's about all I remember of the special ops team. There's a couple more 'ordinary' military people who get pulled into meeting the special team, for reasons that are clearly silly.

The authors used an underused resource in apocalypse fiction, that of a enormous Navy carrier, built to stay at sea for months. This had the most interesting potential, particularly when they started to get into the Doomsday cult or mentality that develops after extended time at sea. Possibly this would continue and be further developed in the next book. This section hinted at issues raised in [b:The Last Policeman|13330370|The Last Policeman (The Last Policeman, #1)|Ben H. Winters|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1344370646l/13330370._SY75_.jpg|18538006], which I hadn't seen before in a zombie apocalypse. I am curious as to that potential.

As one might expect, the book ends as they head into a life-or-death--most likely death--mission. Overall, the unique military focus wasn't enough to overcome the problems in story-telling flow and lack of character development. show less

This fourteen book series is thrill, after gut-punching thrill, and provided me with over one-hundred-thirty-four hours of listening pleasure. I laughed, cried and had several "Heck Yeah," moments. Most of the characters are explained in-depthly, offering a flashback into their flaws and their warped perspectives, as the zombies evolve and eat up the world. But I really do get sick of Anglo-Saxon authors describing Africa and other countries in less than flattering terms, despite the fact show more that it has been Europeans who ruined most of these locations. I mean, if you're going to call a country and all it's people bad names, at least acknowledge how they got that way - I digress!

The story begins a few years into the apocalypse, thus, we are thrown into the action of tier-one, special-ops, trying, and often failing to carry out a series of last-ditch efforts to save the last pocket of humanity, even as that slice of civilization is being gobbled-up, by a new breed of dead-heads that can think, and possess super-human abilities.

I appreciate the consistency of all the books being narrated by the same gentleman, with his soothing, animated voice (I hate when publishers switch narrators, mid-series). I would have liked more books that dive into the rebuilding process, but I am more than satisfied with the kindness of the author, of not leaving us hanging, and wondering how things turned out, as he took us all the way to the end of the fight for their very existence...SMILE!!!

PS:
If you dig strong females, you will love this series! show less

First thing to note is that this is an omnibus edition, which means that there are 3 "books" in here which were originally published (and presumably sold) separately. If you were to get book 1 only, you'd be very annoyed at where it stopped and where book 2 started as it just ends in the middle of the story (i.e. the transition to book 2 in this omnibus is invisible - if you weren't told it was a new book, you'd never know from the story itself). The transition from book 2 to book 3 is a show more little more noticeable (the tone of the story changes a bit too) so I could see how book 3 is legitimately separate from 1+2.

Now, to the story... it's actually an above average pseudo-military post-apocalyptic zombie novel. It's not an action novel - too many characters for that - but it's a decently fleshed-out zombie apocalypse with just enough shooting, zombie gore, and people being killed to keep you reading. No, there is no big twist here, no unexpected source of or behaviour by the zombies, but for a standardly plotted zombie novel, it's at least a 4 star... mainly due to the characters behaving normally and the scenarios being realistic.

I will be reading more by this author since it's nice to have a decent quality zombie novel minus the gun porn and women as mere rape objects. show less