SUB ZERO

By: Matt James

Narrated by: Daniel Henning

The only thing colder than the Antarctic air is the icy chill of death....

Off the coast of McMurdo Station, in the frigid waters of the Southern Ocean, a new species of Antarctic octopus is unintentionally discovered. Specialists aboard a state-of-the-art DARPA research vessel aim to apply the animal's "sub-zero venom" to one of their projects: an experimental painkiller designed for soldiers on the front lines.

All is going according to plan until the ship is caught in an intense storm. The retrofitted tanker is rocked, and the onboard laboratory is destroyed. Amid the chaos, the lead scientist is infected by a strange virus while conducting the specimen's dissection.

The scientist didn't die in the accident. He changed.

©2019 Matt James (P)2020 Tantor

Good

the narrator was overall pretty good. the story was really good only it had to much cussing for my liking. really enjoyed how the creature wasn't at all what I had expected.

Don't.

I cannot emphasize enough how little I enjoyed this book.

The plot was... ok? it wasn't the worst storyline I've ever read, but no impression is a good impression in this case. It tries very hard to be witty at times, which really just comes off as obnoxious.

The protagonist was also decent, but basically every other character was insufferable, although in the author's defense a LARGE portion of blame falls on the narrator who absolutely butchered this book. Reader took the wittiness and ran with it, and the whole book somehow come's off as kind of laissez faire, and it's hard to tell in places what the tone of the scene actually is or how high the stakes are. What really got me, though, was the character voices. Again, protag came off not terribly, but also I feel like a book whose primary character is a black man, a black voice actor would have been a better choice here. The side characters, though...

Every side character, apart from the women and the main antagonist, are done in weird, high-pitched "nerd" voices. Like, really cliché dweeb voices. Not only could I not tell who was speaking a lot of the time, but because the voices were so poorly done, it sort of came off like they weren't meant to be sympathetic characters. It was the sort of voice you use to make fun of some nerd who doesn't matter. At first, I thought it was just the scientists, and that they were meant to be portrayed
as inherently antagonistic, but it was also the layman characters close to the main character, so I really don't know. The only other character who really got a unique voice was the protag's best friend who was like, in his 70s. So an old man voice isn't a bad choice for him, but the narrator decided that in addition to being 70 years old, he's also an old timey, Appalachian gold miner, ig. Every single scene with him, in which he was usually the main character, all I could picture was Cookie from Disney's "Atlantis: The Lost Empire"

Thankfully, I got it for free, so I can get rid of it. Ig you get what you pay for.

don't bother.

Honestly, i couldn't finish the book. The premise of the story seemed interesting, but it ended up just being annoying to listen too. The characters acted like idiots and the narrator gave them incredibly obnoxious voices. Maybe I'll try to finish it again later, but right now its just a pain to listen too.

I wish that I had paid more attention to the poor reviews.

Nothing surprising here. It was a SYFY channel type filler story.It is the sort of story that might fool you into thinking that you too could a "writer ".

Before this I had never considered how much a little acting ability could help a narrator bring life to a story, even one as tepid as this one.

But this narrator did not have any of that ability .
There were times that I was lost as to whether the Afro-American character was being played as if he were a drunk Irishman.

The one true benefit was that it was free..... if you do not count the time I spent listening to it.

sorry.

ugh...

iv tried 2 or 3 times in the year or so this has been in my library to listen. BUT idk I can't put my finger on what I can't stand. Maybe it's the writing. this book makes me feel like morty when they are on the purging planet and the author does the cut back 2 weeks bf.... 2 years bf.

Sub-Par

Not really anything new or unique from this story. Sadly other works by this author are good, but this one misses on so many levels. How infected, effects, and the creature actions and behavior all are less then spectacular or scary. Can’t recommend.

Not a bad try

The plot was the best thing about this book the characters were likable enough but the truth is I kept getting distracted by the narrator he was just awful and every so often the audio would sound different like it was recorded on a different day or with different equipment. All in all it was just to distracting.

Good story but got annoyed by the captain

Enjoyed the story very much but got annoyed with the captain house character kept bringing up his daughter in every other sentence who is also a main character in the story could have done without the constant reminder they are related.

Poorly executed

Solid plot idea, poorly written characters and dialogue. My biggest problem was the narrator oh my god. If Black Face was something you could do with your voice- not word choice, just vocal, this guy did it. Every male character besides House sounded like a woman or a preteen boy. Things like “ugh!” Were read like Siri converting text to speech, he doesn’t make an Ugh sound he just says ugh. I didn’t finish and it had everything to do with the narration.