Thursday 3 September 2015

Audiobook Review: The Dead Walk the Earth by Luke Duffy!


As the flames of war threaten to engulf the globe, a new threat emerges. A ‘deadly flu’, the like of which no one has ever seen or imagined, relentlessly spreads, gripping the world by the throat and slowly squeezing the life from humanity. Eight soldiers, accustomed to operating below the radar, carrying out the dirty work of a modern democracy, become trapped within the carnage of a new and terrifying world. Deniable and completely expendable. That is how their government considers them, and as the dead begin to walk, Stan and his men must fight to survive.
My Thoughts:

I have seen some glowing reviews of this on Goodreads and thought it sounded amazing so eagerly plugged in my headphones to listen. Maybe I should of read it because I think I would of enjoyed it more. The narrator was only OK. It sounded like, to me anyway, he was very stilted and up tight. I felt like all he did was read the lines given to him, he didn't preform nor give any life to the book. He seemed to stop for a second after every sentence which is why it felt so stilted and it came across as a monotone and unremarkable story.

As I said, I might of enjoyed this more if I had read it, but since I listened to it here are my thoughts on the story itself.

An elite team of soldiers are on a covert mission in the Middle East, their objective is to assassinate the head of a known terrorist group. Their mission goes successfully but on their way to their extraction point, they come across a village that has been destroyed, bodies of men, women and children are strewn everywhere. Straight off they see that something isn't right because there seems to be survivours among the dead, but these people seem different. The way they hold themselves and walk are off. As they get closer they start to see impossible things, people with devastating injuries are walking about aimlessly, that is until they see the soldiers. Suddenly they surge towards them and despite the soldiers firing, they keep coming. The soldiers soon learn that only head shots will stop them. They finally destroy the remaining people and head home. They soon learn that what they fought were the walking dead, and the disease is spreading through out the world. Their life is about to become much more difficult and the job a lot harder! Can they all survive?

Sounds great right? Well in one sense it totally was. The story itself was fairly fast paced and intense and I became invested in finding out what happens the team, but in another sense, I felt it was lacking. Maybe I missed it, but I never got the answer to how the disease came about!! I know I zoned out a lot while listening because of the narration, but I honestly couldn't say how the zombies came to be. We also never get a feel for who the characters are. We are thrown into the thick of things with them, but you don't really find out why they are the way they are. I would of liked a little back story on each.

Character wise, I did like them all. The comradeship between the team was amazing and I loved that part. I also loved how good they worked together and how much each of them valued the other. It really brought across the bond they have. I just wanted a little more character development.

In all, I think I may have to go buy the ebook and read this. The story itself was really good but I think I may have missed things because I didn't enjoy the narration and zoned out a bit. It's definitely a book that's still worth the read but maybe the book instead of the audio. 



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