mlsimmons

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

I saw this book on an Audible two for one credit and picked it up. The name of the narrator is what really caught my eye. Phil Gigante is well known in the paranormal romance and urban fantasy world for his work narrating Karen Marie Moning’s books. I’ve gotten to where I’m starting to find more and more new-to-me authors based on narrators and that is what happened here.

When I bought this book, I missed that this was the third book in a trilogy, or if I did notice, I had forgotten by the time I got around to listening to it. I didn’t even realize it when I started to listen to the book. The author provided a nice history in a prologue called “How It Began” that covers the history of how this Pandemic has evolved over the years.

The premise of this story is an alien Orbital comes to Earth with the plan of destroying all human life on the planet.There were eighteen probes on this Orbital with “seeds” on them that would infect the human race. The first few probes had no luck at all. Then they got closer and closer and the Orbital learned and got smarter with each attempt. It comes very close in stories that take place in earlier books. This story is the Orbital’s last chance.

The disease that these people get is highly contagious. The infected become homicidal and start killing everyone around, especially their family. The infected are pretty organized and have a plan to take over the world, starting with Chicago, which is ground zero in this story.

This story is told in third person and told from the point of view of several different people, including some of the infected. It gives interesting insight into how everyone each feels they need to handle the situation in order to survive, be it a newly converted or a human surviving the infection.

I really enjoyed watching this all play out and seeing it from the many different points of view. There are several twists and turns on the way which keeps the story very interesting. This story really had me on the edge of my seat and looking to things to do to keep listening. The only thing I can fault this audio for is there are a few sound effects which I didn’t like. I prefer an audio with just a narrator, especially when you have one as skilled as Phil Gigante.

Narration

I’ve listened to Phil Gigante before. I loved him in Karen Marie Moning’s Highlander series. HIs ability to do many different Scottish accents in both men and women’s voices was miraculous. Now listening to this book, there were not as many different accents, but there were some and he handled those wonderfully. He also did a fabulous job with the crazy. You know how you can hear someone talk and tell they are just nuts? Yeah, that. He nails it with one of the characters in this book. Lastly, there are some people who turn into monsters, not just crazy infected humans. He does a great job with the monster. I highly recommend Phil Gigante as a narrator.