The narrator was rather decent and did the best he could with the material. Easy to understand and had enough variation in his voice to differentiate the characters. I wouldn’t hesitate to listen to another book by him.
Now that I’ve gotten the one good thing about this book out of the way….
I try very hard to find the good in a book because I know that writing a book is hard. You have to add so much detail so that a reader/listener can visualize everything. And maintaining a cohesive narrative isn’t as easy as it sounds. But this book made no sense at all!
Basically, something has gone wrong with the world and there are catastrophes everywhere – flooding, tornados, earthquakes, etc. And somehow, whatever happened made dogs into gophers or something. Mean gophers. In this community, anything living is their prey. The police can’t stop them and always die trying. In order to combat this, everyone goes about their lives as if nothing is wrong. Kids still go to school, adults to work, home deliveries go on unabated, and even though these dogs are killing the community members, no one cares. Government isn’t helping (even though there is no indication that the world has drifted toward anarchy), people aren’t arming themselves – they just blithely notice less people around and say “oh well.”
Two kids suffer tragedy and how do they react? They still go to school, plan for college, and decide that they will just stab all the dogs to death, one by one. Huh?
It seems to me that the author: never saw a dog, never researched how a pack of canines hunt, was never in a fight, doesn’t know anything about which government agency would investigate large purchases of arrows (arrows? oh great goodness!), and doesn’t understand how money works. Honestly, I feel like this book is trying to punk the reader/listener by being as inconsistent as it can. The ending of this story is bad enough (the “dog repellant” that they find), but the very end leaving this series open for more volumes is the scariest thing in the book. No drama, no tense moments, very very little excitement.
Edit: What was the deal with referring to the parents half the time by their real name and then half the time as mother/ father or mom/dad. That was so off-putting and inconsistent and nonsensical.
ONE SPOILER:
At one point, the two 17 year old twins and their weak father go out hunting these killer dogs that can’t be stopped with bullets (only if they are fired by the police, but if one of the kids or a crazy woman fires a gun, the dogs will die – but only toward the end of the book). Now these dogs are tougher, meaner, bigger, and stronger than any modern dog. But these three somehow manage to kill a pack of 5 of these monsters that surround them. Seriously? I just can’t think that the author is serious. I have played with a 50 lbs dog and they can be quick, sneaky, and can accidentally hurt you when you are playing with them. Make that dog 4 times bigger and 100 times more aggressive – no one is surviving that. Even with three inexperienced and “soft” people fighting, five killer dogs would dismantle them immediately.
I would recommend against this book. It’s not the money, it’s the time that you will give it – that one hurt the most.