I really wanted to like this series, truly I did. But man, every time it started to get good, something stupid would pop up and annoy me to the point of breaking immersion. Ill get into some of it, so fair warning, spoiler alert.
The main monster is a mole like dog. Seriously. Subterranian ancient species provoked into coming to the surface. Nothing special about them, nothing overly dangerous. They arent extremely fast, strong, intellegent, venemous, infectious, nothing of thr sort. They are dogs, behaive like dogs, and are as easy to kill as dogs. Oh, and light hurts them, so where a wild dog is a threat 24/7 these guys are only dangerous in the dark. Yet these things appearing brings the us military and its armed citizens to their knees in a matter of days. Its a wholesale slaughter. It makes absolutely 0 sense no matter what way you look at it. Sure, theyd be scary and a threat if youd never ever encounter them before. But after the first night, they shouldnt be a threat. Heck, the characters wife keeps them from entering the house with a simple chair jamed under the knob of a broken door. A simple flashlight beam is enough to send them running in agony.
The main antagonist, a hotshot in an energy company, has his own personal pmc who is openly killing anyone they find in the streets. It happens right in front of the main protagonist, and a freaking national guard detachment goes along with it!??!?!
There are no friendly civilians. At all. Period. Its all of 1 day into a power outage with some freaky dogs, and people just openly slaughter everyone else. Come on, get real guys. I almost finished the 3rd of these 4 books before returning it due to how hard it was to get into, and they had yet to meet a single group of friendly anyone, anywhere, in like 24hours of listening.
The daughter. Ugg, youll he hoping a dog rips her to pieces. Whiny little brat..
Ive suffered through tough openings of books before only to have them turn into gems, which is why i stuck it out so long. But man ive had enough.. i almost never return books, but this one is going back.
If you like the genre, go check out extinction cycle. Youll be far happier.