Audiobook Review – The First Days (As the World Dies, Book 1) by Rhiannon Frater (3/5 stars)

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic
Length: 11 hours and 49 minutes (336 pages)
Publisher: Audible Studios
Release Date: November 8, 2011
ASIN: B0064I1FMY
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the As the World Dies trilogy
Source: Audiobook from Audible.com
Rating: 3/5 stars

“The morning that the world ends, Katie is getting ready for court and housewife Jenni is taking care of her family. Less than two hours later, they are fleeing for their lives from a zombie horde. Thrown together by circumstance, Jenni and Katie become a powerful zombie-killing partnership, mowing down zombies as they rescue Jenni’s stepson, Jason, from an infected campground. They find sanctuary in a tiny, roughly fortified Texas town. There Jenni and Katie find they are both attracted to Travis, leader of the survivors; and the refugees must slaughter people they know, who have returned in zombie form.”

I have had this book for a while to read and was excited to finally get to read it. This was part of the bunch of books I got when I was in a huge zombie reading phase a few years ago. This ended up being a pretty typical zombie book. This book details the first days of a zombie outbreak and two women who struggle to survive it.

I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was well done. It wasn’t outstanding but it wasn’t bad either.

My main complaint about this book is that after the initial rush and struggle to survive the book gets very soap operaish. There is a ton of drama about which characters are hooking up with which other characters. Of course then there is jealousy over this and infighting. I would have rather heard more about the survival aspects and the understanding behind why this zombie plague happened.

This book doesn’t explore the “why” behind the zombie attacks at all. I found that frustrating, but I assume that will be covered in future books. Towards the end of this book they start to address roving bands of brigands and thieves who are attacking the region. It becomes clear that other humans, rather than the zombies, are becoming the focus of the story.

This book is very brutal and gory and doesn’t pull any punches. If you don’t like reading about gore and brutality I would stay away.

Overall this was an okay read that is pretty standard zombie fare. I wish the book had focused less on human relationship drama and more on survival and the why behind the attacks. By the end of the book I was kind of bored with it all. I don’t plan on continuing the series.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– Mount TBR Reading Challenge
– Audiobook Reading Challenge
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
– Flights of Fantasy Reading Challenge
– YA Reading Challenge