A good book, and a great listen.

*disclaimer I know both the author and the voice actors on FB.

Ok, with the disclaimer out of the way, on to the book. This book is in the LitRPG genre. If your not familiar with the genre, just think of it as a Science Fiction/Fantasy book where the characters gain power, and that power is expressed as a numerical value. For instance when a character gets stronger, the book will explicitly say “(generic character name)’s strength has gone up by 10 points”! This is something that is familiar to anyone who has ever played RPG’s(Roll Playing Games), or video games. It basically just adds a bit of geek factor to the book, and can otherwise be ignored if you are not into that kind of thing.

I’ll start with the bad because once you get past that, it’s a very enjoyable listen. The biggest hurdle to the book is the main premise, that virtually every living creature has been infected with a viral particle, which turns them into voracious zombie like creatures, effectively destroying society as we know it just one atom of the contaminated particle, could kill you. The co-protagonists Mace, and Shari, are among the last survivors. The problem that I have with the premise is the virus particle as described would just flat out kill everything. Even plants are affected(though exactly how isn’t well described). The good news is that the author, Dave Willmarth, can fix this in future books, by fleshing out exactly how the viral particle infects living creatures, and just why certain living creatures are affected and some are not. The bunny comes to mind, as well as some immature trees they pick up at a box store. This is the major problem with the book and the reason the story is only 3 stars instead of 4.

On the Audio performance end, the bad is pretty specific and it basically only applies to the first 2 chapters. The narration and voice performances, come across as being a bit “forced”, and wooden. It at times feels like you are just being read a bunch of sentences, rather than being told a story. The good news is that this is specific to the first 2 chapters only, and the Soundbooth Theater team hits their stride by the 3rd chapter, and it becomes immersive and enjoyable. This is the reason that it only received a 4 instead of a 5.

Onto the Good… The world is actually 2 worlds, the physical world, and the world of an online RPG game, where Mace and Shari have created characters. If you start with the premise that the world isn’t quite as deadly as our heroes think, it is well written, and could be a book in it’s own right. The character interactions are well done, suffering only from the fact that there are basically only 2 characters to interact with. It’s the online world where Wilmarth’s writing starts to shine. The online world is basically what you would find in any fantasy book, and would be a stand alone work of a high caliper.

On the Audio end of the spectrum, once you get past the first 2 chapters it is nothing short of excellent. It almost seems like the actors just needed a bit of time to settle into their characters and narration. By the end of the book the performances are seamless, and you get to that golden point of any audio book where you forget that you are listening, and instead you are just experiencing.

I will defiantly be purchasing further books in this series, as everything that bothered me about it has either been fixed(performances), or will be fixed(too deadly world) in the next installment.